Episode 101: Amy Cicchino and Kristina Hoeppner === Intro Music and Highlight Quotes --- [00:00:05] Amy Cicchino: But what I also love about that principle is it acknowledges the labor that we're asking of our students when we assign portfolios. Very often, portfolios are this big task in a course, and we maybe begrudge the students who push back against us. And so I love that principle creates space to say, "Portfolios are labor." They're labor for support staff, they're labor for educators, and they're labor for students, and we need to acknowledge that as part of our practice. [00:00:39] Kristina Hoeppner: I think we had about 30 ideas in our first brainstorming and then whittled it down to about 10, where we thought these were the burning questions that we wanted to discuss. Those were Support, Promote Awareness, Practice, Accessibility, Technology Usability, Data Responsibility, Respect for Author Rights and Reuse Permissions. So quite in a way technical things, not necessarily technical in the term of technology but very hands-on things-- Okay what does need to be provided? How do you give support? How do you make sure that people know about portfolios? Podcast Welcome And Guests --- [00:01:19] Alan Levine: Hello and welcome to episode number 101 of OEGlobal Voices, the podcast that we do here at Open Education Global. I'm your podcast host, Alan Levine. And for episode 101, I don't know why association, I'm thinking of Pacific Highway Coast 101 down the West Coast of the US. We're taking a longer highway connection stretching all the way from Florida to Wellington, New Zealand. In this episode, our guests include Amy Cicchino, who works at the University Writing Center at the University of Central Florida, and Kristina Hoeppner, who's coming to us from Wellington, New Zealand, who does work for a company called Catalyst in the open source ePortfolio platform, Mahara. We came together to talk about a really fascinating project from the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning, or AAEEBL, that Kristina and Amy both are part of. And this organization does a fabulous amount of collaboration around the world on electronic portfolios. And what we're gonna hear about today from Amy and Kristina is their work on AAEEBL's project to publish the Digital Ethics Principles for ePortfolios. We recorded this episode a bit back on June 25th, 2026, and we're real excited to bring you our conversation. Here we are in the OEGlobal Voices studio. I'm really excited to introduce our guests. And I'm gonna ask them to introduce themselves. and interesting, as you'll hear, we're rather spread out geographically, which is the global thing. Meet Amy In Orlando --- [00:03:00] Alan Levine: So first, Amy, let us know who you are and where you are. [00:03:04] Amy Cicchino: Yeah, so I'm Amy Cicchino. I am an associate professor and director of the University Writing Center at the University of Central Florida, which is located in Orlando. So geographically I am in the United States, the southeastern corner of the United States where it's very warm. In terms of temperature we also offer a lot of diversity here [00:03:34] Alan Levine: Our listeners are listening by audio, can you describe your surroundings? What do you see around you where you are right now? [00:03:40] Amy Cicchino: So my office overlooks our writing center which is quite busy. In fact I muted myself because our front desk phone just rang . I’m surrounded by people and writers and activity which is such a blessing. We jokingly call our centre the fishbowl cause we just have glass windows everywhere. And so it’s really lovely. You get to see parents and students walking by, touring campus and writers working with consultants. It’s just a hub of activity. [00:04:11] Alan Levine: All right. Meet Kristina In Wellington --- [00:04:12] Alan Levine: And I'm gonna ask Kristina to say hello. We've known each other for so long we probably won't say, but we haven't talked in a long time, so it's great to have you here. [00:04:20] Kristina Hoeppner: It's so good to connect with you again, Alan. I I think I've met you the first time in person which I was so super excited about when you came to Aotearoa New Zealand where I've been living now for a few years. So i live in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, which is right on the roaring 40s so in the southern hemisphere. Temperature-wise, we are not quite on the opposite end of Amy because it's... doesn't really get that cold in Wellington but it's very blustery and stormy this morning and very dark. I don't actually see anything at the moment out on the outside because it's still pitch black. But normally I'm overlooking a bay-- nice body of water. In summer there can even be dolphins. Otherwise I see half the people that come to Wellington fly in, when they are flying in from the north, because I'm just on the pathway to the airport. I work f- for Catalyst IT which Is a software development company here in Wellington. But we also have offices overseas. At catalyst I'm on the Mahara team within the Learning solutions group where we look at producing one of the portfolio platforms that is used quite widely around the world. And I've been doing that since 2010. [00:05:45] Alan Levine: Right? School Memories And Learning --- [00:05:48] Alan Levine: And we're gonna get deep in the portfolios, but also, my other curiosity question is, and I'll start with you, Kristina, 'cause we're still talking. Where in the world did you grow up, and what did you think of school as an early learner? What kind of student were you? [00:06:01] Kristina Hoeppner: I grew up about 18,000 kilometers away from Wellington in Europe, in Germany specifically. And, I think I was a pretty good student f- growing up. I was very much interested in "I need to listen in class", typically sitting more at the front of the class when possible rather than in the back so that I could focus. I did have the opportunity to be in pretty small classes, during primary school because, I was in a special language class. Having grown up in East Germany, we had special language classes for Russian at the time and so my parents thought it was a good idea for me to enter one of those classes, and so from the third grade on, I learned Russian. But unfortunately, in a way that was not so conducive to me and how I can learn best because, unfortunately, I don't really speak it since we always only translated, read text, and never did have the opportunity to speak so much. And so my experiences of learning English and then later on also French were much better because I had the opportunity to also talk to people and use the language rather than only reading books or articles or memorizing poems or speeches that we had. [00:07:31] Alan Levine: And, just because it's our topic, do you remember doing anything in early spheres that would've been portfolio-ish or a portfolio-like activity? [00:07:40] Kristina Hoeppner: Ah, Not that I remember. No, not even at university. It was very much just the rote learning especially at school. I still remember that at some point we even had a competition going in biology class between three of us who cut out the most pictures and put them into their notebook to illustrate what we were learning. But it was very much copying the text from a textbook, copying the pictures or pasting the pictures, in, and that continued very much into university as well. There was a lot of paper writing in particular. Not so much multiple choice quizzes because that was not part of the German university experience. I studied North American cultural studies, German as a foreign language, and political science, as the latter two as a minor, and there you just wrote papers. We had a few exams during the first and second years, but after that it was pretty much papers. And yes, there was, of course, doing research where you needed to come up with a synthesis then and an analysis, but it was not so much in the area of reflection unfortunately. So yeah, it's not part of my growing up. [00:09:01] Alan Levine: But you found your way. And Amy, where did you grow up and go to school? [00:09:06] Amy Cicchino: So a less impressive, history than our polyglot, Kristina over here. I, I went to school in Southwest Florida. I'm a first generation college student, that's what we call it in the United States when neither of your parents have four year degrees. I think my teachers would have always described me as hardworking, but I was never the star student. Learning never came easily for me. My PhD is in writing, and I tell my students all the time, "I got a C in composition" and just school was just often quite, quite hard, but I found if I could work through it, I would eventually figure it out. Then I went and got my master's at Florida Gulf Coast University. After that, I taught high school English for about seven years before going back and getting my PhD at Florida State. And it's at Florida State where I was fortunate enough to work with, Kathleen Blake Yancey, who is an expert in ePortfolios and reflection. And so that was my introduction to both of those practices. As the student who just wants to work through and get things done, I remember reflection being really frustrating for me at the start and talking to Kathy and being like, "Why are we doing this?" "What am I supposed to be learning here?" And then sure enough, through trusting the process and engaging in this habitual practice, I started to really see like that integrative and reflective thinking. It's just totally changed how I learn, how I teach, how I practice my scholarship and reading and writing habits today. What Is AAEEBL --- [00:10:51] Alan Levine: We're here to talk about some work that you've done together. And first I want to understand this organization. we will say AAEEBL, Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning-- great acronym. First of all, tell us about  AAEEBL and, how does it come together and do its work? [00:11:09] Kristina Hoeppner: AAEEBL is "The International Professional Development Organization for ePortfolio Practitioners and Researchers." So that was a direct quote from the website. I wanted to make sure that I say that because typically when we talk about AAEEBL it's the folks that do portfolios, and not just in the United States even though it was founded there. But early on, of course already encompassing all the researchers portfolio practitioners from Canada, but then also very quickly spreading around the world and inviting people from other countries like Australia, New Zealand, and also Europe into the conversation, and also Asia. So before the pandemic there were usually also a number of um, portfolio researchers from at least Japan that I remember. They've attended quite frequently There's not so many portfo- portfolio organizations around the world. Notably in Australia we have ePortfolios Australia that is now also becoming more global and having more international speakers and workshop participants and presenters. But in previous years there was also Eportfolio Ireland, and in Germany there's a g- network of portfolio practitioners as well. But those are very much localized and not too much going on in other countries, and therefore having AAEEBL also making sure to schedule webinars or conferences so that people from other time zones can attend more easily rather than it's 2:00 in the morning for them. It's really fantastic to bring people together to share ideas, to share research, and also to network and give people the opportunity to connect with each other. Amy, do you want to share how how you actually got started with AAEEBL? I think I've met you for the first time at the last pre-pandemic AAEEBL conference at Bronx Community College in 2019 [00:13:09] Amy Cicchino: Yes, yeah that's how I joined. I knew about ePortfolios through my doctoral program. But I knew about them from my disciplinary lens which is Writing Studies and so we do some disciplinary research in ePortfolios. And that was really where I was most familiar with them. And Cathy was on the board of AAEEBL at the time. When I joined the team at Auburn my director Margaret Marshall said "You know the first thing I really want you to do is I want you to go this AAEEBL conference and I want you to start talking with ePortfolio practitioners 'cause they're important and such just a lovely group of colleagues." And of course she was right as she is about most things. But to Kristina's point just the diversity of perspectives in AAEEBL is so refreshing. Not only does everyone practice portfolios and experiential learning techniques in their own right, but they're very generous with thinking about what it might look like for us as a field to practice ePortfolios. [00:14:16] Alan Levine: So it sounds like it's a community. Is someone in charge of AAEEBL or is it like a, a committee? like who's behind the scenes making things work? [00:14:27] Kristina Hoeppner: Yeah, so there's definitely a board and also a leadership team. AAEEBL was started by Trent Batson, and he had organized, uh, the early conferences I think the first conferences were around 2010, 2011. I think my first AAEEBL conference I attended was in 2012, and traditionally they had been held in Boston together with another conference at the time. But then, um, a few years later it was decided to move them also to other institutions making it more easily possible for people in different regions also to attend and not everybody always having to fly to humid Boston in summer . It's definitely a community that is led by a board. Currently Debbie Oesch-Minor from Indiana's University Indianapolis is the president. Tracy Penny Light had been the president for many years and, um, then there was a transition last year. Pablo Avila is the vice president, Uh, he works at LaGuardia Community College. Then there are a number of other people on the board. Amy had already mentioned Cathy Bleakney was on the board as well. John Ittelson from California State University Monterey Bay was on it and, uh, several others who have been portfolio practitioners for many years sharing their expertise. [00:15:59] Alan Levine: This sounds like an old homecoming. I did some work with Trent Batson. I was on projects with him, and John's a good friend. There was a lot of interest when I started my career at the Maricopa Community Colleges, we were building platforms and practices. I met Helen Barrett, many times. She used to call herself the grandmother of ePortfolios. . Who Joins The Community --- [00:16:19] Alan Levine: I'm also just curious, and we'll get into the talking about the main topic here, but in terms of the kind of, practitioners who come to this-- your first thought might be the writing instructors-- but, doesn't it cut across a wide range of disciplines? [00:16:35] Kristina Hoeppner: Amy, do you want to take this? [00:16:36] Amy Cicchino: I, I'll kick us off and then, please jump in. Yes, it's an interdisciplinary community of practitioners, but I would also say different kinds of ePortfolios are being leveraged. And so we'll often get folks in general education programs, or programs that have high standards who are maybe doing learning portfolios as a way to conduct assessment and possibly support their accreditation renewals and applications. Then we have a group very interested in showcase or professional portfolios who are really helping students think in their collegiate years about that next step and leveraging the portfolio as this digital public facing platform. And so yes, you'll see folks from all different disciplinary areas of study, but also like career centers, writing centers, general education. So that's another kind of cool aspect of it as well. And then of course, the people who actually design and make these technologies function. [00:17:41] Kristina Hoeppner: So just as an example, a f- few weeks ago we had the AAEEBL Annual Meeting and then the week after the AAEEBL Symposium, so the, the once yearly get-togethers for the community. And there we had presenters and facilitators from Engineering, Pharmacology. Sue Shibecki from Macquarie University joined to talk about work integrated learning, so all things internships and practicums. But there was also the career center represented that Amy talked about. The Writing Center of course, but also those cross-cutting institution or organizational bodies at a university that bring people from different disciplines together. Megan Mize, for example, from Old Dominion University works quite a bit with, general education and first year seminars. Candis Reynolds from Boise State University who's not just on the board for AePR, the magazine of AAEEBL, but also has been teaching in the first year seminar for many, years. We also had Sonya Taylor, who works with students who have early entrance into the university, so Portland State University, and many others. So as Amy said, yep, it's not just one discipline that works with portfolios, but we've had the chance to hear from so many different ones and also to experience the many different ways portfolios can be used. [00:19:16] Alan Levine: I'm already picking up, you had a conference at Bronx Community College, LaGuardia Commun-... So community colleges are very involved in this, and it makes sense. it's nice to see projects that bridge both community, vocational, and university learning, and that's where portfolios fit. Why Digital Ethics Principles --- [00:19:34] Alan Levine: We're here really what we're gonna get into is this project, that is It's done now, right, Digital Ethics Principles in ePortfolios. I imagine that was years in the making maybe or, But first give us an overview of what it is and, " never done!" Amy says in chat. That's most projects. What was the impetus to try and develop digital ethics principles for ePortfolios? [00:20:01] Kristina Hoeppner: I'd like for Amy to start because as far as I remember from that 2019 AAEEBL annual meeting that we had you led one of the sessions that looked at digital ethics at that event or at least were then also asked to lead the first task force here. [00:20:25] Amy Cicchino: Yeah, I think it, it honestly came out of that conference and the discussions that were had at that conference. Whenever you have digital technologies being leveraged in educational settings, really across society right, then digital ethics is always involved. And I think with portfolios, when they moved to that electronic space a big hesitancy that a lot of us felt in engaging an ePortfolio practice was like, "How do I work the technology?" And then "What are ethical implications of my students creating their portfolio online?" I think there's always been some anxiety around those questions in the field. At that conference there were just several different voices saying the same thing. Megan Mize from Old Dominion led a great session on end user license agreements. I presented, with Lucas Adelino from Auburn University on how you feature other people's work in your portfolio, if it's a collaborative artifact, how you get consent. We were just seeing these threads around digital ethics coming up. And so we had some sort of a, a debrief or a community conversation which is very common for the AAEEBL Conference. We were causing a ruckus as folks attending a conference who are passionate about a topic tend to do. Helen Chen said, "That's a great idea. Y'all should do something about that." That's really how the task force, started. But I'll say the talent on the taskforce it's shocking. There are so many committees where nothing gets done, and this group of individuals, so productive, so driven, so accomplished, not only have they completed one version of the principles, they're up to the third version. Kristina can maybe talk about how the taskforce has changed under her leadership as well to integrate like AI, which is again another point of technological anxiety for all of us. [00:22:37] Kristina Hoeppner: Yeah, so we started the task force in 2019 and I think at that time we, never imagined to still have it running in 2026 now in the seventh year and we've just put out the call for participation for year eight that still runs until the 15th of September. So if anybody listening to the episode before then you're very welcome to see if you'd like to be part of this group that had been international from the start. Of course most people coming from the United States from institutions there but there's always somebody from Canada. I'm trying to hold the Southern Hemisphere flag up and make also sure that there are at least one or two Australians in the group. We've also had somebody from The Philippines be a member for one year and , that is in itself already a challenge, trying to organize something time zone-wise to make it work for everybody. So we have naturally like a community that has evolved over time. The first year under Amy's leadership a couple of her colleagues were very focused on getting the principles out, developing 10 principles. In the second year we developed three more principles. And then in the third year we consolidated them back into 10 because it got unwieldy. If you're having too many things, you're spreading yourself too thin. And there are definitely also connections between the individual principles. So it was very good to do some consolidation work, reflect on well, what do you want to do? And Then we didn't just want to p-put out principles, but also support educators, students and also platform providers, who are our three main target groups for each principle in Implementing the digital ethics. And so for us, d-digital ethics is not an esoteric or philosophical concept. so much, More, we are looking at digital ethics from a very practical lens. What are some examples or where we can see digital ethics? What are strategies that people can use? And also what are some scenarios to give people concrete ideas one, two, or three of the principles. Since it is quite a lot of work when you are the chair or the co-chair of anything, we also wanted to look at how do we organize our community, our task force community that we recognize also the labor that goes into leading a team and share that around. I'm not sure if it was already Amy in the first year. At latest, I think in the second year when we established that somebody would be a co-chair for a maximum of three years so that we always have one person who had seen it before; they are on the outgoing side. Then we have one person who stays on for the next year and then there's an incoming person. And of course over time especially over the last few years when workloads have shifted and also responsibilities have shifted with people, that was not always possible that we had three people on the leadership team but we've always looked at how can we spread the work and also not make it "Amy's" task force or Megan's Task Force or Christina's task force and putting all the work on the co-chairs to do. But that it was always the task force and if you are on a subcommittee of it or a subgroup looking into a particular topic then it is the group that makes decisions. And yes you are not reporting up you're kind of sharing what you're doing with everybody else but it's not on the leadership team to make sure that you're progressing things. The Ten Principles Explained --- [00:26:39] Alan Levine: First of all, I'm gonna be in sheer amazement. everybody's volunteering for this because, they believe in it and they understand the power. Anybody wanna read the principles and we can talk about how they came to be. Anybody wanna outline them? [00:26:53] Kristina Hoeppner: Amy, do you want to? [00:26:54] Amy Cicchino: Sure, I just had to find the tab. So the version three principles are Support, Promote Awareness, Practice Evaluation, DEIBD which stands for Diversity, Equity, inclusion, Belonging and Decolonization, Accessibility, Technology and Usability, Responsibility, Respect for Author Rights and Reuse Permissions and visibility of Labor. [00:27:30] Alan Levine: I wonder, did it take a lot of work to get to 10? Did it take a while to say, "This should be," or, "How do we group them?" 'Cause any time you wanna come up with a, a classification scheme, it's hard work. [00:27:43] Kristina Hoeppner: I think we had about 30 ideas in our first brainstorming and then whittled it down to about 10, where we thought these were the burning questions that we wanted to discuss. Those were Support, Promote Awareness, Practice, Accessibility, Technology Usability, Data Responsibility, Respect for author Rights and Reuse Permissions. So quite in a way technical things, not necessarily technical in the term of technology but very hands-on things-- Okay what does need to be provided? How do you give support? How do you make sure that people know about portfolios? And then in the second year we looked at what are some bigger topics that we also wanted to tackle. And that's where we got into looking into Visibility of Labor Evaluation and then also DEIBD Diversity Equity inclusion Belonging and Decolonization [00:28:39] Amy Cicchino: I'm most proud that we didn't just keep sewing them on there. It's very tempting to just keep adding the principles. And so I think that was under Kristina's leadership and Megan Mize they said, we gotta kinda, we gotta keep this manageable. And I think that's a very respectable goal to have, 'cause academics will just keep stacking higher and higher [00:29:02] Alan Levine: Right away I want to say commendable. Technology is pretty far... It, not that they're in order but it doesn't lead with technology which is quite refreshing to see. When I'm just reading them, they're generally good principles you can apply to other areas. Maybe we can talk about a few of them but first I wanna mention that the structure that is there it's not like you wrote an encyclopedic book chapter on these. They're very concise with th-the rationale and then what I like is that it has these use case scenarios that you can get different situations that they would be applied. I wanna just salute you for that. Favorite Principles Spotlight --- [00:29:40] Alan Levine: Is there any particular one that, that you really feel like super passionate about or you wanna make a case to talk about this is like the best principle? [00:29:49] Amy Cicchino: Should we each talk about our favorite? [00:29:51] Alan Levine: Yeah [00:29:52] Kristina Hoeppner: What's yours, Amy? [00:29:54] Amy Cicchino: I think mine ... and I'll just add the idea behind this structure, we talked a lot about audience when we were developing the first version of the principles, and we wanted these principles to be accessible, to educators, to administrators, but then also to students because students are the ones often doing this work. Yes, they're intentionally concise, and they're intentionally accessible, with the ideas that you could use then the resources to jump off into to research supporting these principles. I think my favorite one, I'm really appreciative of the Visibility of Labor principle. , A subgroup of the task force wrote this really impressive article for Across the Discipline about third space professionals, Megan Mize, Sarah Zurhallen, and Morgan Gresham. And they talked about, how we help make visible the labor that needs to happen to often make portfolios happen. But what I also love about that principle is it acknowledges the labor that we're asking of our students when we assign portfolios. Very often, portfolios are this big task in a course, and we maybe begrudge the students who push back against us. And so I love that principle creates space to say, "Portfolios are labor." They're labor for support staff, they're labor for educators, and they're labor for students, and we need to acknowledge that as part of our practice. [00:31:30] Alan Levine: I'm so glad you chose that one 'cause when I first read it, it's like I don't see too many people framing their work in this perspective, so I really wanna commend the task force. What's your favorite, Kristina? [00:31:42] Kristina Hoeppner: Just briefly on the visibility of labor, Megan, Morgan and Sarah also published the North American study. So they had done research on portfolios and uptake of portfolios and what is being done at institutions. We've done a similar study in Australia, New Zealand but are not nearly there yet to publish the results. But yeah, we'll link to that study because it gives very good insight into who is doing the labor at an institution, and often it is tagged onto other responsibilities. There's not many organizations that do have ePortfolio studios or dedicated areas that are just for portfolios, but it's part of the writing center or it's individual faculty doing it, or it is part of the learning designer's remit, and they have many, many other things as well. So highlighting that part and also the labor goes into it, for me has also really put the finger on something that is often assumed kind of like volunteer work. Yes, you do volunteer work, but is there recognition for it? Or should it actually be volunteer work or should it be part of paid work? And those conversations we can have now easily because we have the principle. I do have a favorite, and that's not from the first year. It is from the second year because I was working on it with Kevin Kelly from San Francisco State University who is so knowledgeable and uses portfolios in many creative ways, and we work together on the principle that we ended up calling DEIBD, so Diversity, Equity, inclusion, Belonging, and Decolonization. And for me it's a favorite principle because we interviewed a whole bunch of people from all four of these areas. And we also interviewed non-portfolio practitioners because we are not creating the principles necessarily for the people that are in the field but as Amy said, for the students as well. So we wanted to make sure that we also get a perspective from people that are not involved in portfolio practice. Normally you'll hear the abbreviation DEI or DEIB or DEIBA, So there's lots of different acronyms in English. Sometimes there's the accessibility in it. Sometimes it's just diversity and equity and inclusion or diversity and inclusion. But through the interviews that we had we realized well, we do want to point out decolonization not just lump it together with, oh yeah it's equity or it is inclusion and belonging because there are a number of other considerations that need to be have had when we are talking with First Nations peoples and when we are involving them in the practice. We had deliberately made sure that we are also engaging with these communities. So we had conversations with a Canadian scholar and then also with couple of people here in New Zealand. We then decided to add the D because it is still important to make sure that we are pointed to it, that it is consciously in our mind and not just, "Oh yeah, they're encompassed in it." And that's why this one is one of my favorite really because it's also so rich in the strategies and covers a lot that we want to achieve with portfolios: That students have ownership; that students create portfolios; that students bring in themselves so that they see they belong; that they see that it's included; that we see the diversity in the answers and not just, 'oh, everybody's going through a multiple choice test and it gives the same answers.' [00:35:45] Amy Cicchino: The diversity of the committee was so important, but it was especially important, I think, for that principle because when you see the decolonialization work that's happening in New Zealand, in Canada, it's just so incredible. Sorry, my phone is ringing. This is to be in a writing center. When you see that work, it's so incredible and it informed the work of the task force so well, especially for folks in the United States where we're increasingly being told we can't even say these words. And yet there are other countries that are engaging in these rich and critical practices of decolonialism. [00:36:29] Alan Levine: And we're still so far to go everywhere. Actually I had not seen everything wrapped together as DEIBD so I'm taking that one away. Author Rights And Reuse --- [00:36:39] Alan Levine: I wanna ask too because of course you know I work for this organization Open Education Global so you have respect for author rights and reuse permissions which you know hits on the expected topics but can you just talk about what are the implications of rights and reuse in portfolios? To me it's like students sees this as their personal work and so maybe they're not always thinking about those principles. [00:37:08] Kristina Hoeppner: For us, we wanted to make sure that like with all the other principles, that we raise awareness quite a bit for what is going on, what people should be considering. So it's not necessary to always follow all 10 principles so you can pick and choose, but what we wanted to make sure is that other people's voices are recognized, that they are acknowledged, and similarly to the visibility of labor, that things are being made visible. So if you're looking at author rights and reuse permissions, electronic portfolio in particular thrives on being able to not have text included, but also look at multimodal content, so your images, your videos, your audio content. Students don't necessarily need to write. They can speak a reflection or they can draw something and put that into their portfolio. But of course, not everybody has design capabilities and therefore might want to enrich their portfolio with images of other people or images other people have taken, or they want to include a video where they are in group work, and then naturally other people are shown. We want to make sure that they know, well, did you ask permission for that person to be part of your portfolio? Did you get permission from them to record them? 'Cause especially if you're looking at a public facing portfolio, some people might want to be more hesitant in having any videos of themselves online because you can't take them down again. The educators and also students need to have conversations around privacy, around what can be shared online, what is maybe permissible to share just internally for a course. Do we have students shown? Do we have young kids shown in the pictures or in videos? What do we need to make sure to keep other people safe? Because the portfolio is not just about ourselves, but it is about the experiences, and often there are other people involved in those experiences [00:39:14] Alan Levine: Sometimes when you talk about those issues, it comes across "Don't do this because you'll get in trouble," which is important, but does it flip around to talk about the value to be able to decide, "I do want to share this so maybe someone else could make use of it. Maybe it would be used in someone else's project." Does that get wrapped into the principles? [00:39:35] Amy Cicchino: I would say it does, especially this principle. So yes, there is a lot in this principle that talks about respecting the work of others or images or materials created or co-created with others. But the very first bullet is also really a nod to administrators and institutions, to respect student-created ePortfolios, recognizing students should have agency of their portfolio sites. It's meant to help support reuse literacy and digital literacy and helps students think about their digital identity and digital footprint and the footprints of others. But I think it's also a call for even institutions to respect ePortfolios as intellectual property and the intellectual work of students. [00:40:28] Alan Levine: And of course, I have to note that the entire Digital Principles is released under Creative Commons license, it's like a no-brainer, but sometimes people forget about that. What Comes Next Including AI --- [00:40:38] Alan Levine: What's the ongoing work, now that this is in version three? What are you working on or fine-tuning going forward? [00:40:46] Kristina Hoeppner: So we haven't looked at updating the principles now in a couple of years. Kind of We do need to do some work around updating references have a look at are these principles still relevant? We've had a good heated conversation once AI came on board. What do we do? Do we make it a separate principle? Do we intersperse it into the existing principles and make sure that things are covered? And that work is still ongoing. We do have an AI paper draft that is being progressed, and that will hopefully be published either later in the year or early next year. What we have been doing over the years besides the research projects, one of them I've mentioned about the North American mapping study and also what is happening in Australia and New Zealand. A lot of our task force members present at conferences and write papers about their work and also incorporating the principles. And then we also ran workshops introducing the principles at first, but we've also run a series on AI and portfolios, and continue this year to work more closely with the wider AAEEBL community and the AAEEBL board to offer webinars. So we are not necessarily specifically always only talking about the principles like we did in the early years of the task force, but really making it possible for people to come together and then bringing the principles into the conversations that we are having. Amy, I think you are involved, more closely with the AI paper and of course through your own research and work with your students. Do you want to add anything there? [00:42:37] Amy Cicchino: I would just say, addressing AI is such a challenge for so many reasons, one like the moment it's produced it's dated, but also so many of these existing principles have implications for AI integrated ePortfolio practice. And so to Kristina's point we've had this white paper, it's been circling around for about a year And one thing that we are debating very openly is who is the audience for this paper? Is it students? Is it practitioners? Is it folks in the field of ePortfolio? I think our strength has been our pragmatism. And so we really have to figure out the purpose and the impact of that paper I think before we can, openly share it. But the workshops and the conversations about AI in practice with ePortfolio development I think have helped us start to suss through some of those larger questions. [00:43:40] Kristina Hoeppner: And like Amy said, AI is moving at the speed of light. We started out with, "Okay, here are some examples of prompts that can be used for reflection and things people can do," Now prompting is so last year, and you just need to pivot so that we do need to put a stake into the sand and at some point say, 'Yes, this is what we are putting out.' And yes, we are fully aware of additional things coming on board or newer things being worked on. And that's where the conferences and workshops are so important that we have timely conversations about the topics look at what people are currently doing, what they are thinking about, to then share those and see how we can incorporate that. And that's why also for the AI white paper I find it's been quite difficult because we did not necessarily want to expand on the principles because, of course, AI touches so many of the areas there, but then also bringing it into the existing principles is quite a challenge so that AI doesn't overpower. Of course, all the other elements that are included that don't necessarily have AI in it are still so important. We are not getting away from the support, from raising awareness, from practicing portfolios, from ensuring that good evaluation and assessment principles are done We are actually thinking about an assessment principle. There are differences between evaluation and assessment, and they also differ between the countries. So we have very interesting conversations around language. It took us a while to even just come up with do we say "administrators"? Do we say instructors? Do we say educators, students, or learners so that we are inclusive of different countries, their language, but also not just make it for higher education because I think these principles can also be used in the workplace when somebody is working with portfolios. So yeah, lots of conversations, and it doesn't just stay at the conversation level. We are definitely also having actions come out of it and then make sure that we progress what we had started and then have an output that we can always share with the community. So that's always been important for us from the start, that we work openly, that we invite everybody who wants to work on the task force. Yes, there's an application form 'cause we do want to know a little bit about anybody who wants to join our week group, but it is quite lightweight. We do want to work with different people, invite people from other countries to be part of the conversation and therefore also enrich how we think about portfolios. [00:46:35] Alan Levine: I just wanna thank you so much Kristina 'cause I've been reaching out to you or we started communicating about doing a podcast about your work. And then when you suggested Amy in this project it's just, it's opening up, a new corner of information for me but I think it's extremely impressive again I'm not just saying that because you're my podcast guest but to see this kind of collaboration happening not just among different institutions but different countries i- it's really inspirational. So thank you again. Off Duty Hobbies And Wrap Up --- [00:47:05] Alan Levine: My closing question I like to ask like when you're not doing all this task force work and portfolio stuff Kristina what do you like to do outside of work that brings you pleasure? [00:47:15] Kristina Hoeppner: Oh, outside of work I really like taking photos when I travel and I don't travel nearly enough to have so many photos. And Alan, I'm, always going back to your photos from 365 Days where you take a photo every single day. And you have been doing that for many years, so it's really impressive. But on a daily basis when I come across new park benches I do take photos of those. That has been a hobby of mine since university actually when I participated in a photography course at UC Davis during my year abroad and we needed to pick a topic for our final project. And of course, UC Davis being very agriculturally heavy lots of people chose barns and abandoned buildings and things like that. But Davis being the bike capital of the United States I saw some pretty interesting benches -- shaped like a wheel and so I thought, "Oh this is actually a good project." And so I took heaps of benches at that time and have been continuing that since then and have well over 1000 benches from different cities. So that's that's all the non-people photos but then I do have the opportunity typically one to four times a year to take photos at tech conferences here in New Zealand. Usually they are community organized so working in an open source community I'm just entrenched in community-led activities, [a] number of our conferences are community conferences, like KiwiPyCon which is a Python conference, KawaiCon, which is an information security conference and so on. None of that is directly related to portfolio work at all and so I just sneakily attend the conferences under the disguise I'm taking photos for you and to capture the experience and document it. I always learn something because of course tangentially because it's technology it does relate to my work but there's also lots of rich conversations around mental wellbeing or just career work and how can you get into the industry. Lots of conversations also around diversity equity inclusion belonging and decolonization. And so it's rich conversations that I can attend by just taking photos and absorbing everything. That's really fantastic to then look back at photos and remember those moments in time rather than having a video and just seeing it run past. We do have the, FLANZ Conference, so Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand come up early October. We've just put out the call for papers for that and, there the topic is, He Tangata, so The People. So really focusing on those conversations with people. And yes, usually, we do have a number of international speakers at that. It is going to take place in Ōtepoti in Dunedin, so in the South Island, just about two hours by plane away from Wellington [00:50:34] Alan Levine: Your fascination that continues with park benches, that just speaks to the willingness to pursue something. . There's a website, it's called Open Benches or something like that, where... [00:50:45] Kristina Hoeppner: I think there is, [00:50:45] Alan Levine: Yeah, so fascinating stuff. So Amy, we're not comparing, but we wanna know what you do when you escape from the writing center. [00:50:54] Amy Cicchino: Yeah, the writing center is very busy and so I am very happy to spend a lot of time there but when I'm not there I have pit bull who likes to drag me around different parks in Florida. I like to bake; I’m in a book club we just are reading The Parable series by Octavia Butler. And so try to -try to have some time outside of the centre and outside of portfolio practice and teaching practise to remember what it's like to be human in this world. [00:51:26] Alan Levine: That's so important. I just wanna thank you both, Kristina and Amy for taking the time. It's been a great conversation, and look forward to crossing paths again. [00:51:36] Kristina Hoeppner: Thanks so much for having us, Alan. It's been great to see you again. [00:51:40] Amy Cicchino: Thank you. Credits And Next Episode --- [00:51:40] Alan Levine: Thank you again for listening to this episode of OEGlobal Voices, the podcast from Open Education Global. Each episode features a different musical intro track that I select from the Free Music Archive. For today's show, in thinking about one of the principles we talked about, I selected a track called "Im Labor Pt. 1" by 4di, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike license. So you'll be able to find this episode at our website, voices.oeglobal.org. You can join us for follow-up conversations in our OEG Connect community space, or anywhere you interact with us on social media. If you're listening to us and you have an idea for a topic, a guest, anything related to open education work, let us know. You can find us via our website or email to voices@oeglobal.org. We'll see you again soon for episode 102.