Principle Summaries and Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction: How to Use this Document
Support
Institutions should provide appropriate support for students, educators, administrators, and staff who create ePortfolios.RATIONALE: Institutions must devote resources to supporting ePortfolios, including professional development in ePortfolios. ePortfolio stakeholders are encouraged to partner with offices that have expertise in disability, informational literacy, technology, writing, and teaching and learning to create inclusive ePortfolio requirements with built-in alternatives for individuals with limited access to technology and the internet.
Promote Awareness
Institutional administrators, staff, and educators are responsible for promoting awareness of digital ethics in ePortfolio making.RATIONALE: ePortfolio educators, administrators, and staff should have a working knowledge of the ethical issues related to ePortfolios, including data collection, security, and management; ethical sharing and representation; digital bias; accessibility; ePortfolio security and privacy; copyright, fair use, and open access; and intended vs. potential audiences.
Practice
ePortfolio creators need opportunities to develop and practice the digital literacies necessary to create accessible and effective ePortfolios.RATIONALE: ePortfolio creators need practice with digital literacies. ePortfolio instruction should teach creators what ePortfolios are, why they are creating one, how to employ visual design and Universal Design principles when creating one, and how to work with ePortfolio tools and technologies. When creating ePortfolios, a knowledge of their audience, context, and constraints should guide creators.
Evaluating ePortfolios
ePortfolio evaluation should consider process, inclusion, reflective practice, and alignment with the stated objectives of the context in which the ePortfolio was created.RATIONALE: Educators and students benefit from a shared understanding of what content in the ePortfolio will be evaluated as well as the criteria for evaluation. Evaluation mechanisms should be developed in accordance with best practices of ethical ePortfolio pedagogy, including process, inclusion, and reflection. Educators need to make explicit how evaluation criteria align with assignment or course objectives or should develop criteria in collaboration with students. The evaluation process ideally includes both educators and students.
DEIBD: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Decolonization
Educators are aware of equity-related challenges and address learning needs related to each student’s identity, culture, and background as they create ePortfolios.RATIONALE: The creation of ePortfolios happens within a multitude of contexts: The country you live in, your institution, the dominant academic culture, the platform provider’s approach or philosophy, the personal beliefs of each educator, and also the intersection of identities, cultures, and backgrounds of the individual learners. Students, educators, administrators, and ePortfolio platform providers should gain awareness of equity-related challenges, take action by constructing equity-minded ePortfolio assignments, review the ePortfolio experience with students regularly to ask about any equity-related issues that may impact them, and include student advice and recommendations on ePortfolio projects and assignment instructions.
Accessibility
All ePortfolio platforms and pedagogy should be thoroughly vetted for accessibility according to the standards identified by one’s culture, government, or profession.RATIONALE: ePortfolio platforms should be accessible to diverse creators as well as diverse audiences. Stakeholders should test platforms for accessibility, and educators and students should be educated about accessible content creation.
Technology and Usability
Technology must be equitably available, usable, and supported for all students, educators, and staff engaged in ePortfolio work.RATIONALE: An inclusive ePortfolio program provides opportunities to create ePortfolios using institutional resources so that all stakeholders have equal access. Likewise, ePortfolio software should allow for creation and viewing across any device, browser, and operating system.
Data Responsibility
ePortfolio creators should know where their content is stored, who has access to it, how it might be used without their knowledge, and how much control they have over it.RATIONALE: ePortfolios are digital spaces where students must navigate issues of data ownership, privacy, and agency. Informing and advocating for responsible data privacy practices ensures that ePortfolio creators have the freedom to reflect, curate, and contextualize their learning on their own terms. Administrators, educators, staff, and platform providers must engage relevant stakeholders in conversations about data, including compliance with relevant policies, laws, and regulations.
Respect Author Rights and Re-use Permissions
ePortfolio creators should understand and respect author rights, best practices for re-use, and representation.RATIONALE: Because ePortfolios ask creators to re-use text and media, they need a working knowledge of plagiarism, copyright, fair use, and licensing. Students should be ethical owners of their ePortfolios and engage in conversations about how to responsibly move artifacts into ePortfolios, particularly when artifacts represent professional or collaborative experiences or involve the representation of others.
Visibility of Labor
The labor required by students, educators, and administrators to create, develop, implement, support, and evaluate ePortfolios should be visible, sustainable, compensated where appropriate, and counted toward evaluation and advancement.RATIONALE: Learning is invisible labor. Constant shifts in technologies, strategies, rhetorical knowledge, technical skills, genres, and professional expectations require ongoing efforts by all stakeholders. The ability to develop, implement, create, support, and assess ePortfolios requires faculty and staff to have multi-disciplinary expertise that should be recognized and rewarded by the institutions in which ePortfolio work takes place. In addition, the intellectual and affective labor and personal risk required of students to learn and employ new platforms, genres, and compositional practices when designing and creating ePortfolios should be recognized and rewarded.
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This document was created by the AAEEBL Digital Ethics Task Force.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
