Create. Share. Engage.
Portfolios for learning and more brought to you by the Mahara team at Catalyst IT. Host Kristina Hoeppner talks with portfolio practitioners, researchers, learning designers, students, and others about their portfolio story.
Episodes
Developer Doris Tam, BE, and Senior Visual Designer Evonne Cheung, BDes, from Catalyst IT talk about the redesign of Mahara that went live at the end of April 2026. The redesign marks a milestone in the almost 20-year history of the Mahara project. It overhauled the look and feel of Mahara entirely, aligning it to modern principles of design-led and responsive web design. This makes it easier for portfolio creators to use and inter...
Host Kristina Hoeppner looks back at the advice that the learning designers, faculty, and students from the past year have for learners who create portfolios. Their advice can be put into five different categories:
- Authenticity and identity
- Embracing creativity and risk
- Purpose and audience
- Reflection and growth
- Ownership and pride
Interviews in alphabetical order:
Dr Rob Lowney, SCMALT, SFHEA, SFSEDA, is a Senior Learning Technologist in the Teaching and Enhancement Unit at Dublin City University in Ireland. He's been working with digital technologies for many years and supports students and staff at DCU in their work with them. Rob is also active in the Mahara and Moodle communities because DCU contributes knowledge and features that benefit everyone.
Rob talks about the use of group portfol...
Take out your planner or open your digital calendar and get ready to enter the upcoming events that give you the opportunity to chat with other portfolio practitioners because you don't want to miss any of them. There's a mix of Mahara focused events and wider portfolio community events and a mix of free and paid-for events.
Here they are in chronological order:
May 2026
- 6, 7, and 12 May: Unveiling Mahara 26.04: A fresh look and e...
Pablo Avila, MA, is the Associate Director of The Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College (City University of New York). He's been creating portfolios and supporting students and faculty with their own and the strategic implementation of portfolios at LaGuardia since 2008.
In this episode, Pablo talks about his own portfolio journey, how it influenced his work with portfolios, and how students and faculty at ...
Associate Prof Dr Amy Cicchino, the Director of the Writing Center at the University of Central Florida, is back for another interview. This time it's all about student support and the student perspective. Two of her students, McKenna Slaughter, BA, and Nghi Chau, join her to talk about their experiences creating portfolios themselves in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and as Graduate Assistant and Undergraduate Peer Tutor r...
Associate Prof Dr Mpho-Entle Modise and Prof Dr Norm Vaughan are the editors of the book 'Digital resilience of ePortfolios during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons for the future', which was published in 2025 and brought together 85 authors from around the world who shared their diverse portfolio stories. In this episode, Mpho-Entle and Norm share highlights from this publishing experience and themes from the book.
Dr Vickel Narayan is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Learning in the Institute of Education at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand. He's been working with portfolios for nearly two decades at various institutions of higher and tertiary education in Aotearoa and Australia.
Vickel shares his thoughts around the use of artificial intelligence, in particular large language models, in education and portfolio practice. He highlights AI...
Dr Megan Mize is the Director for ePortfolios and Digital Initiatives in the Academic Success Center (ASC) at Old Dominion University (ODU). She's been supporting portfolios at ODU since 2012 and is currently involved in a couple of strategic initiatives at her university that incorporate portfolios to support students.
Resources
Yvonne Moore, MA, is the Digital Education Developments Lead, and James Pearce, BA, is the Educational Software Development Manager in the Centre for Learning & Teaching at University of Bath. They support faculty at the university to implement educational technologies meaningfully and effectively - Yvonne from the pedagogical side and James from the technical side.
The university has been using Mahara for many years and focusse...
Prof Dr Debbie Oesch-Minor and her student Salsabil Qaddoura from Indiana University Indianapolis talk about portfolios at IU Indianapolis, in particular in Debbie's composition course that Salsabil took where she created a portfolio that showed her the power of this practice.
Debbie shares her reasons for working with portfolios and supporting other faculty and students in the portfolio process within the ePortfolio Studio. Salsabi...
Associate Professor Dr Jaye Ryan, SFHEA, headed the nursing ePortfolio programme at Birmingham City University (BCU) in the UK between 2010 and 2019. She supported students and staff in creating ePortfolios and introduced Student Academic Mentors ePortfolios (StAMPs) to help students as peers.
In this episode, Jaye talks about the ePortfolio practice in her nursing programme, the challenges she faced, and how she and the StAMPs made...
Soropepeli Ramacake, MSW Applied, PGDip in Supervision, Dip in Counselling, BTheology works at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Fiji as Assistant Lecturer. He is also a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney.
Soro uses Mahara as portfolio platform with his social work students who are on placement in various South Pacific countries, supporting them mainly from the distance.
Resources
- Chief, I. Y., & Ramacake, S....
Associate Prof Dr Amy Cicchino, the Director of the Writing Center at the University of Central Florida and Brandi Gilbert, MPH, the Director of the Life-Health Sciences Internship Program at Indiana University Indianapolis talk about high-impact practices and how portfolios fit in.
Resources
In this episode, podcast host, Kristina Hoeppner, MA, from Catalyst IT, picks out a few memorable situations from her recent trip to Europe in September and early October 2025.
Resources
- MoodleMoot DACH
- MoodleMoot Global 2025
- Kawaiicon
- Mahara UX review 2024
- Mahara refresh mock-ups
- CPD enhancements
- Mahara subscription
- 'Mahara Ask Me Anything' sessions
OStR'in Antje Koenen, MA, is a senior teacher for English and German at Max-Beckmann-Schule in Frankfurt a.M. in Germany. She also works for the Hessische Lehrkräfteakademie, facilitating workshops for other teachers in the use of Mahara and digital media in general, amongst other things.
In this episode, Antje shares why portfolios are a central part of her teaching and learning strategy. She explains how portfolios help engage stu...
Dr Tessa Forshaw, Founding Scholar of the Next Level Lab at Harvard University and Rich Braden (BSEE and BSCE), Chief Innovation Evangelist at People Rocket are the authors of the book Innovation-ish: How anyone can create breakthrough solutions to real problems in the real world.
In this episode, they share what innovation and creativity mean to them, how everyone can be creative and innovative, and how the portfolio comes into pla...
Jack Rice, MBA, is the Director of Digital and Extended Learning at Acadia University and the Executive Director of the Maple League of Universities in Canada.
In this episode, he shares stories from his various positions where he encountered portfolios and how he's changed his view on the tool and pedagogy to embrace portfolios fully and seeing them as being very important in the future of education.
Resources
Christina Mayes, MSc, is the Assistant Director of Digital Support Services, including the Fletcher Jones Digital Portfolio Lab within the Center for the Dominican Experience at Dominican University of California, U.S.A.
In this episode, Christina shares how the peer mentors at Dominican support students with questions for their portfolio, career readiness, and navigating college life in general.
Resources
Assistant Research Professor in Principled Innovation Dr Bea Rodriguez-Fransen works at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU), focusing on its Principled Innovation Infrastructure for Discovery and Engagement initiative.
In early 2025, Bea published the book Education and decolonial futures in the Philippines: Perspectives for educators and practitionersin which she introduces the de...
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