This photo was taken by Kathi in Dublin, Ireland in May 2023.
As portfolios moved from analog, paper collections into electronic formats, the ePortfolio community realized the importance of multimodality—options to communicate using audio, video, visuals, and other digital media. ePortfolios created more possibilities and highlighted the importance of preparing students to communicate multimodally and in digital environments. Kathi, being an expert in both portfolios and digital multimodal communication, was a leading voice in guiding ePortfolio scholars and practitioners to be multimodal communicators.
Whereas ePortfolios were once seen as a remediation of print portfolios (e-portfolios), now we see them as a distinct practice in expression and assessment with benefits that emerge because of their multimodal and electronic capacities (ePortfolios). Kathi’s work helped us depart first from the portfolio to the e-portfolio and then to the ePortfolio, reminding us again and again that multimodal technology is a part of the “makingness” process of an ePortfolio. Read below to learn more about Kathi’s role in supporting multimodality in ePortfolios.
Yancey writes about ePortfolios’ “web sensibility” in her 2004 CCC article, “Postmodernism, Palimpsest, and Portfolios: Theoretical Issues in the Representation of Student Work,” noting that web-sensible ePortfolios:
. . . through text boxes, hyperlinking, visuals, audio texts, and design elements not only inhabits the digital space and is distributed electronically but also exploits the medium. In other words, this model may include print texts, but it will include as well images and visuals, internal links from one text to another, external links that provide multiple contexts, and commentary and connections to the world outside the immediate portfolio. (Yancey, 2004b, p. 745)
Web-sensible ePortfolios “speak to the possibilities for student invention and representation” (2004b, p. 747) and occupy a space “between technology and portfolio... that could be productive” if we embrace the creative possibilities for digital multimodal communication and move beyond “the impulse of technology to collect and systematize” (p. 756). In this piece, Yancey highlights that the “e” in ePortfolio is essential, not extra or additional—the “e” is essential.
But ePortfolios are not just unique because of their characteristics as digital-born texts. Kathi’s work also highlights their potential for circulation that was impossible with their paper portfolio antecedents. She writes that this capacity for sharing and circulation makes ePortfolios “a public exercise as well as a personal one,” creating new possibilities in “self-sponsorship” (Yancey, 2009, p. 12). Indeed, ePortfolios can be shared with a classroom, program, or institutional community through showcase events, but they can also be shared beyond the institution, which Kathi might describe as not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. In recognition of this capacity for circulation and sharing, many ePortfolio practitioners have selected ePortfolio technologies that can be sustained beyond a student’s graduation and shared publicly through an externally accessible link. With this new possibility, new risks arose, too, as students need explicit support understanding the risks and benefits related to public circulation.
Hear from Kristina Hoeppner, M.A., Project Lead at Mahara Catalyst IT and current chair of AAEEBL’s Digital Ethics Task Force and read below:
Kathi is very generous with her time and sharing her knowledge. When I approached her about an interview for my podcast 'Create. Share. Engage.' she was in right from the start and already had a specific topic on hand, heuristics in portfolio practice, a current research interest of hers.
With a team of academics at Florida State University, she developed a reflective framework that leads learners to greater insight by asking them a series of well-designed questions that explore the learner's experience in the past, present, and how it might influence their future (Yancey 2023). This framework makes me wonder how it can be scaled up. Could it be overwhelming for some learners to see all questions up front? Would they benefit from a more scaffolded approach? Should the questions not only be localized but also personalized? That's where I think artificial intelligence might be beneficial.
Leticia Britos Cavagnaro from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) at Stanford University developed Riff, which is a chatbot that has a reflection framework built into its architecture and leads learners to greater insight based on their previous answers, referencing the learner's specific context. Instead of asking a generic question like 'What are you going to change the next time you attempt this scenario again?', it can ask 'What are you going to change the next time you prepare a lesson plan for your 6th grade class?'
What if we could use Kathi's reflection framework in a reflection bot and craft how it responds to learners around it? Would learners benefit from the personalization that is scaffolded one response at a time? In the context of artificial intelligence, many new questions need to be asked that will influence portfolio practice for many years to come, in particular in the areas of transparency, data privacy, DEIBD (diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and decolonization), which the AAEEBL Digital Ethics Task Force and others are exploring.
There is much to build on from Kathi's research, and I look forward to continuing to learn from Kathi and our community.
In this moment, we realize the role interoperability and digital literacy plays in supporting ePortfolios as multimodal spaces to connect, reflect, and integrate learning. Will multimodal freedom be possible in platforms that work within institutional learning management systems? As AI generation becomes more capable of being used to outsource visual design, we must ask how we can work with this new technology to retain the values of multimodal and digital literacies in ePortfolio creation, something Kristina Hoeppner discusses above. We must also consider how the same multimodal and circulation potentials that allow students to tell and share rich stories of who they are, what they’ve learned and where they are going might also put them at greater risk for bias and discrimination. More work is needed in digital ethics and the affordances, constraints, and risks that accompany ePortfolios in the digital, networked world. For instance, what do we gain and lose as AI generative tools become commonplace and are able to assist with parts of the ePortfolio creation process? AAEEBL’s Digital Ethics Task Force is an example of this work, which we hope will continue to be a point of important consideration and research for the ePortfolio community.