[DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] Learning Activities and Portfolios: time for a talk?

[kamann at stanford.edu]

Hi Daphne
Sorry, saw this after I just sent my earlier response. 

For course sites, I think there are those who just will want to use some default template so we want to give them something well thought out out of the box. Given how many people we see building their own course sites outside of Sakai though, I think there are those who want to brand their course with it's own look and feel (though using an external site is also prompted by other content or functionality need)

Portfolio sites are probably a similar situation, but I suspect will have a greater proportion of users who want to personalize it.

However, to be clear, I think the design of these views of student work (portfolios) is separate from the areas we'll be thinking about for learning activities. It will need it's own team of dedicated folks (because it has many parallels to course site design, perhaps the team working on that would have a lot to say). I had posed this question because I was wondering if objectives for an activity was a way that student work needed to be sorted and found to create such views; if so, that's an important hook for us to build in.

Keli Amann
User Experience Specialist
Academic Computing Services, Stanford University


----- Original Message -----
From: "Daphne Ogle" <daphne at media.berkeley.edu>
To: "John Norman" <john at caret.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: "pedagogy Learning" <pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org>, "sakai-ux" <sakai-ux at collab.sakaiproject.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 4:03:07 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] Learning Activities and Portfolios: time for a talk?

Another thought below.

-Daphne

On Mar 18, 2010, at 3:28 AM, John Norman wrote:

> There is another parallel to be drawn between portfolios and  
> content. I believe NYU are exploring this angle.
>
> If you split content into two broad categories, a resources library  
> and consider course pages to be a set of presentations that put  
> selected content from the library into 'presentations/views' for  
> various audiences (arrange them on a page), then creating the course  
> pages is very similar to the portfolio use case whether we are  
> talking about matrix-style competency portfolios or personal profile  
> type portfolios.
>
> Any distinction is typically around the processes associated with  
> creating the 'presentation/view' and feedback and grading  
> considerations.
I wonder if another distinction is the effort the user wants to (is  
willing to) put toward creating the presentation and views.   For many  
instructors, getting the content up and organized is a means to an end  
which means they may want to *think* about the process much.  Is this  
true for portfolios too or is the process really part of the  
portfolio?  This kind of distinction becomes important in the  
interaction design as it helps us understand how much flexibility or  
structure to build in.  I guess this is where templates come into play.
>
> John
>
> On 17 Mar 2010, at 19:00, kamann at stanford.edu wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>> I came to a realization this morning after talking with Clay. For  
>> the Learning Activities project, I have been talking about breaking  
>> the functionality that had been siloed in T&Q, Assignments, and  
>> Gradebook and Schedule. However, despite this, I was still thinking  
>> of Portfolios as a separate thing from the learning activities work  
>> we were doing. It's probably not as separate as I had been thinking.
>>
>> Early on we talked to Janice Smith to get an overview of portfolios  
>> and Sakai. We talked to Virginia Tech about their work with  
>> portfolios and they later contributed some interviews. However, VT  
>> was the only school that explicitly used portfolios and the  
>> interviews they had at the time were only with students and TAs.  
>> Because none of the instructors we interviewed formally talked  
>> about writing out objectives and tying this to learning  
>> activities , none of the 8 instructor persona talk about things  
>> like writing objectives or attaching these to their activities, or  
>> evaluating student work based on such objectives.
>>
>> This morning I read a note I had from a talk with Amber, Teggin,  
>> and Sam at Virginia Tech. They said that in one sense Assignments  
>> and Portfolios are alike in that students upload files to both, but  
>> Assignments is all about the submission, while Portfolio is more  
>> about the process.
>>
>> Clay has reminded us that the needs that have been captured in  
>> Portfolios could, in the future, be met from different contexts,  
>> since tool boundaries will not be the same in 3.0. While it may be  
>> that the goals of a person interested in capturing evidence that a  
>> student has met certain objectives is different than one who just  
>> wants to give them an 87%, it's likely that they share some common  
>> needs that only fork off at a certain point. This is why embodying  
>> clusters of needs as persona has been useful for our project: it's  
>> a tool for helping us to see when Jane and Lisa have the same basic  
>> common needs, only Lisa needs a little more, or when Mark needs a  
>> completely different interface from Tammi.
>>
>> While there is a part of me that wants to narrow focus, I know that  
>> we'd likely miss a great opportunity if we did. If we design  
>> interface for describing a learning activity, there are likely  
>> hooks into learning objectives that we need to plan for. Would an  
>> interface for grading a student submission be the same as that used  
>> for one evaluating it as part of a student's portfolio, or would it  
>> be radically different?
>>
>> I think that there are three ways we can start to build this  
>> understanding.
>>
>> 1) touch base with the folks who are thinking about OSP for 3.0  
>> (Noah, Beth)
>> 2) review the learning capabilities work that the T&L community is  
>> doing
>> 3) find out about VT's latest interviews since January
>>
>> After this, we may either need to add a persona, or it's possible  
>> that some of the existing persona might think more about objectives.
>>
>> What do people think?
>> Keli Amann
>> User Experience Specialist
>> Academic Computing Services,
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Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
daphne at media.berkeley.edu
cell (925)348-4372




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