The educationalpractices in the discipline of biology have gone through anumber of changes over the last decades. Like otherlifesciences, biology is facing arapid expansion of knowledge and technologies that enable access to large amounts ofdata. The growing technical demands of these emerging methodologiesprovide challenges to biologyeducation that needs to pro-vide sufficiently qualified graduates for the increasingly technology-intensive biologysector (Hounsell & MCcune, 2002). These developments contributeto a shiftingfocustowards
gen-eral skills and employability in biologyeducation. Against this backdrop, the role of tradi-tionallaboratory teaching in the biologycurriculum is being critically discussed. Especially considering that many graduates are notworking inlaboratories anymore, it has been argued that laboratorywork should be decreasedinfavour of new content and technologies used in biology (Jones, Reed, Weyers, & Weyers, 2007). While laboratory work remains a central e le-ment inbiologyeducation, recently a number of new teaching and assessment practices have emerged, such asportfolioassessment, increased emphasis onICTskillsanduse oflearning management systems to support the learning. Thesedevelopments are also noticeable in Nor-wegianhigher education in biology.
In Norway, biologyisoffered both atbachelor’s andmaster’s level, and aspart of teacher training programmes (lektorutdanning) at nine different institutions. In a recent mapping survey of biologyeducation in Norway,Hole and colleagues (2016) asked biology students (N=751) andteachers (N=231) from all Norwegian highereducation institutions about their experienceofdifferent aspects of teaching and learning. Students reported being generally satisfied with their study programmes, but had differing opinions about different teaching approaches. The majorityclaimedtolearn bestfrom self-ledstudying and group work and maintained that individualwritten feedback and conversations with the teacher function bet-ter towardslearning than grades and more generalfeedback to the whole class. The survey among biology lecturersshowed that 56% oftherespondents havecompletedapedagogical course and that a majority would like a stronger emphasis on teaching from the university leadership. Nonetheless, few wish to prioritise the development of their teaching skills or to use more timepreparing for their teaching. Teachers differedintheir attitudes towards teach-ing methods, but generally reported that they believe group discussions and student presen-tations promote motivation and active learning. Regarding student diversity, teachers claimed that new students often lack basic knowledge inmathematics, biology and general study skills. The developments in Norwegian biologyeducation are also reflected in the es-tablishmentof a Centre for Excellence in EducationInitiative (SFU) focused onimproving and innovating the way biology is taught and studied at Norwegian universities. The ecology courseinthiscase study waslinked to this SFU, which has among one of its aims to ‘change from a culture of teaching to one of learning’ byengaging students actively intheir learning and by developing new teaching methods.
One of the pedagogical practices used in the courses linkedto the SFU is portfolio assess-ment. Portfolio assessment is a topic that has been widely studied bothinthe Norwegian con-text and internationally. There is a variety of definitions available in the research literature and practicesaround portfolios varygreatly across institutions and disciplines. One common definition is the one by Paulson and colleagues (1991, p. 60):
‘A portfolio is a purposefulcollection of student work that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress, or achievements in one or moreareas. The collection must include student par-ticipation in selecting contents, the criteria for judging merit, and evidence of the student’s self-reflection.’
Dysthe and Engelsen (2004) expanded the notionofportfolio and described it as a process that istypically divided in three learning phases: the firstphaseincludes activitiesresulting
in a variety ofobjects (written, oral, visual,practical) that are collected in a working portfolio.
In the second phase students select documentation for their presentationportfolio, often sup-ported by formative assessment. Inphase three, thepresentationportfolio isassessed sum-matively, i.e.it ismarked with a final grade. Theelement offormative assessment,or, in other words, feedback that isgiven onthestudents drafts with anaimto improvetheir final assign-ment is central to the design of portfolio assessment. Feedback provided before the final as-sessment has shown itself to be a powerful tool to promotestudent learning and motivation (Evans, 2013; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). It is argued that feedback is most productive when it provides the student with information about the learning goals of the task, what progress has been made towards the goals and whatactivitiesneed to be undertaken in order to reach the goals (ibid.). In line with this argument, Clarke and Boud (2016) argue that portfolios shouldnotonly beseen as a tool for students to demonstrate their learning outcomes, but that the process of receiving and giving feedback also serves as a learning goalin itself. Esp e-cially making meaning of feedback and developing strategies to implement feedback com-ments intheir work is a complex process that students need to master (Esterhazy & Damşa, 2017). Clarke and Boud(2016) suggest that if portfolio designs provided students with op-portunitiesnot only to receive, but also to givepeerfeedback on each other’s portfolios, it would help them indeveloping their ability to judge their own work. The ability to self-assess has long been recognised as an important skillneeded not only in highereducationbut also in the workplace setting and for lifelonglearning (Boud, 2000). This would also make portfo-lio assessment more manageable for teachers, who often refrain from choosing this design due to the high workload that comes along with teachersproviding feedback on all working portfolio elements of their students. Anotheropportunity emerging from portfolio designs is related to the information that teachersreceive about the learning progress of their students.
In that sense, portfolio design is a strong casein point for the classic definition of formative assessment, which entails a two-directionalprovision of feedback to bothstudents and teach-ers, which enables them to adjust their learning and teaching strategies along the way (Scriven, 1967). Despite the growing popularity of the portfolio design, the element of peer feedback is often not used. Inthe Norwegian context, a study revealedtypical patterns inhard sciences suchasbiology, wherefeedback isusuallygivenby the teacher and the portfolios mostly comprisepractice-related, case or project assignments but rarely reflectiontexts from the students (Dysthe et al., 2007).
Against the backdrop of these research findings and the developments in thefield, thiscase study provides an opportunity toshedlighton the waystudent-activating pedagogical prac-tices are concretely implemented in biology and how these practices are related to the wider institutional and disciplinary context they take placein.Basedon theresearch literature on portfolio assessment, a focus is put onthe waystudents were provided with and engagedwith feedback. Moreover, we took special interest in the way the portfolio assessment tasks and related teaching activities were planned by the teachers and what factors influenced the way these elements were enacted during the course. In this regard, we paid special attention to the challenges emerging for both students and teachers in managing high workload and course complexity.
3.3 Empirical context and data
The casestudy isbased on a21-week-long undergraduatecourse in ecology(10 ECTS)ata largeresearch-intensive university in Norway. Thecoursewastaught inEnglish andenrolled bothNorwegian andinternational students who could choosetowritetheirassignments in
1 individual open assignment on self-chosen topic; 3 group assignments covering three main areas of ecology represented by the three different professors; 5 individual text-book assignments covering different topics from the texttext-book
Teaching and learning activities
Individual and group work; lectures; tutorials/data labs; feedback on drafts & feedback sessions-on-demand; peer review of individual assignment
Number of groups/stu-dents observed
3 groups, 3 students each
Types of data General course material: course plan, syllabus, lecture slides, task descriptions, re-sources provided via Learning Management System, teacher’s self-evaluation of the course
Observation protocols: a total of four 2h lectures, five 2h tutorials/datalabs and two 2h student presentations were observed by the researcher by filling in a protocol
Video recordings: three lectures and four tutorials were video recorded (only teacher in the front); videos of six group work sessions of student groups during the tutorials (9h5m)
Audio recordings: two recordings of group work during tutorials (2h20min); eight group work sessions recorded by the students themselves (22h30min); three recordings of feedback sessions with the teacher (1h22m)
Documents/Products: Drafts and final versions of individual and group assignments of the nine students; notes and screenshots from the group work sessions
Interview data: Pre and post interview with main teacher (each 1h); Group interviews with three groups (each 1h); brief ad-hoc interviews with three of the other teachers and the students groups
Field notes/online data: Field notes from every site visit; all course-related interactions in the Learning Management System, on Facebook and email
Student survey: questions about experience of teaching-learning environment, ap-proaches to learning, self-efficacy and general working skills; handed out after the course ended; 13 responses (50% response rate)
A total of ninestudents consented to be interviewed and to have their group work observed and their assignment drafts collected. The otherstudents were only passive participants, which means that none of their drafts were accessed and they were not recorded. The nine students signed up voluntarily in the thirdweek of the courseafter they had been assigned
by the teacher into three groups inorder to work on the group assignments together. These groups were followed in detail and formedthree embedded cases (cf. Yin, 2013) within the overallcase study of the course. The following Table 4 gives anoverview of thecase and the collected data.