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The traditional teaching portfolio is essentially a paper based product. It usually contains a large amount of information, some of which may take the form of media other than text. With its bulk and diversity of form, the paper based teaching portfolio often fails to highlight to personnel decision makers the salient aspects of one's accomplishments. This paper discusses how a computer based teaching portfolio can present the essential information in a variety of media and in an interactive way and how it allows less important information to be appended with links, which personnel decision makers can choose to examine, browse, or skip. The paper also discusses the merits of this dynamic and interactive form of the portfolio and argues that it is a more effective alternative to the traditional teaching portfolio.
The traditional teaching portfolio is essentially a paper based product. It usually contains a large amount of information, some of which may take the form of media other than text. For example, it may include photographs or a video tape of class activities. With its bulk and diversity of form, the paper based teaching portfolio often fails to highlight to personnel decision makers the salient aspects of one's accomplishments. In order words, the viewer of the TP is often overwhelmed by the abundance of information presented, which, as Boyle (1992) points out, necessitates strict selection.
The development of a TP is a long term and dynamic process. Even with careful planning it is likely that after a year or so the portfolio will contain a very large amount of information. Clearly, when a staff member wishes to prepare a case which demonstrates her teaching effectiveness it will be necessary to be selective about the information provided and the way it is presented to personnel decision makers, for example, promotion committees and selection panels. (Boyle, 1992, p. 5)
The interactive multimedia teaching portfolio (IMTP) is my response to the limitations of the traditional TP. Rather than having to look at a pile of documents and searching for critical information, everything is presented on a computerised presentation.
In this computerised presentation, the major information is displayed as if on pages, or slides, as they appear on screen. Each slide contains information relating to a particular aspect or topic of the record of teaching achievements. A number of topics make up the slide presentation. There are various kinds of links between different topics or pieces of information. More important information is given the prominence it deserves and less important information is appended and can be viewed by those who are interested.
The former characteristic makes it possible for the viewer to view selectively only the information relevant to the criteria of selection, which may or may not have been made clear to the candidate. The latter characteristic makes it possible for the viewer to jump from one part to another easily. Unlike the traditional TP, where the viewer has to flip back and forth and may get lost, hyperlinks and media links in the IMTP, made possible by the multimedia technology, allow him to conveniently switch back and forth between different types, pieces or levels of information.
It is not uncommon that a teacher in the course of developing his teaching portfolio would like to include an electronic presentation that he has prepared as lecturing material for his class. This may have been done in any of the popular slide show type of presentation tools available nowadays, like PowerPoint or Persuasion, and it may contain scanned images or other graphics. But this may mean that the resulting file is too large for an ordinary floppy diskette to hold. What can he do? In any case, merely attaching a floppy diskette to a TP hardly does justice to the teacher's efforts. So the option of creating an all-electronic version of a TP obviously deserves attention. It is exactly this that prompted me to create my own IMTP[1].
The second merit of the IMTP is that it is in colour. While colour printing remains complicated and expensive, the IMTP with its delivery medium being the computer video display is much more impressive than its traditional counterpart. With the right video output device, photographs as well as graphical information can be displayed in thousands or millions of colours, whereas traditionally in hard copy, they are either black and white or in relatively 'primitive' colours.
The IMTP also offers a remarkable way for prioritising information. Essential information is placed on the slide. The viewer will see the information when he enters the slide. Less important information is appended to a relevant slide, or the relevant part of a slide, like a graphic or a word, with hyperlinks or media links. Compared with the large pile of appendices that goes with a paper based portfolio, the IMTP is apparently a neat and tidy, and more effective alternative.
Whether in text, numbers, or photographs, whether considered essential or supplementary, information can take on much greater dynamism which the paper based counterpart can not achieve. For example, on paper, the graph or chart represents possibly the most visually dynamic means of presenting statistical information. In the IMTP, the data can be presented in a much more dynamic way. Animated charts and graphs can be generated, which can visually impress the audience with the way numbers grow, or trends develop. They are ideal for demonstrating, for example, increases in teaching effectiveness ratings over time.
When it comes to ease of use, the IMTP has several advantages. It can be browsed by an individual or by a group of individuals, for example. Where the traditional TP is usually limited to single readership, (Imagine the fuss of reading through a mass of paper documents in a group.) the IMTP is as effective when viewed by a panel of several individuals, which is often the case when a staff member is considered for promotion or substantiation.
Again, when a TP is reviewed by a panel of adjudicators, the original TP submitted by the teacher is typically xeroxed and then distributed to each member of the panel. The presentation package that the teacher has built into his TP is inevitably lost. His colour cover, his colour photograph, and very often his binding effort will disappear. With the IMTP, group browsing along with immediate discussion is possible and, more importantly, every one in the panel is looking at the original version of the TP.
To a certain extent, the IMTP helps improve the review process as well.
With the IMTP, the viewer can choose to view all information or only selected information; he can determine the sequence in which he would like to view the information. The viewer examines the information in the IMTP in much the same way as the pages of a paper based portfolio. There is one more merit. He can jump to another page easily without being bothered with flipping pages. Flipping is simply a click on the mouse. He never gets lost. In this way, the viewer takes an active part in the process of browsing through the IMTP. The author of the IMTP can prioritise information in the portfolio in a way he thinks best. The viewer, on the other hand, can exercise discretion as to which appended information he would like to view, perhaps according to some preset criteria. He can then be said to be cooperatively building a TP with the teacher. And it is this cooperative role the viewer plays that adds to the interactive dimension of the TP.
The IMTP is particularly suited to on-going development. Slides can be added at any time when the amount of information has grown. There is no need to retype or reprint the entire document. Compared to a paper based document, the IMTP provides great flexibility and will last longer. The next time you get an award, you can write a small paragraph about it, scan and insert a relevant photograph, and then create a new slide and place it under the appropriate topic in your presentation. Revisions can still be made up to the last minute before you present your portfolio.
In developing my own IMTP, I used Asymetrix Compel as the main authoring tool and Intel Action Media II as the video capture module. Compel is relatively easy to use. It allows navigational buttons to be created without having to resort to a draw and paint program. Making hotwords, creating animated texts and graphics, linking up media events can all be done with menu driven commands. No scripting is necessary. Of course, this ease of development has to be traded in for power. For example, you cannot create a drop down menu and you cannot play two video clips at the same time. However, for designing and creating a TP, I believe Compel is adequate.
In developing your IMTP, it would be best if you could cater to users with equipment of the lowest common denominator. On the PC platform, for example, this means you will have to restrict yourself to using standard Multimedia PC (MPC) device formats, like the Video for Windows (with file extension .AVI) format for videos and the waveform (with file extension .WAV) format for audio. This will allow your IMTP to be viewed from the lowest end MPC platform.
Boyle, P., Gold, N. & Stokes, M. (1990). The teaching portfolio: An aid for the systematic evaluation of teaching in higher education. Discussion Paper. Hong Kong: City Polytechnic of Hong Kong.
| Author: Bruce K. C. Ma, Division of Language Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Email: LSBRUSMA@cityu.edu.hk
Please cite as: Ma, B. K. C. (1996). The interactive multimedia teaching portfolio. Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/ma.html |