Amy Cicchino & Brandi Gilbert: Portfolios as high-impact practices

Episode Transcript
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Kristina Hoeppner (00:05):
Welcome to 'Create. Share. Engage.' This is
the podcast about portfolios forlearning and more for educators,
learning designers, and managerskeen on integrating portfolios
with their education andprofessional development
practices. 'Create. Share.
Engage.' is brought to you bythe Mahara team at Catalyst IT.
My name is Kristina Hoeppner.

(00:29):
This episode centres aroundportfolios as high-impact
practice, and so I'm reallystoked that my guests today are
Dr Amy Cicchino from theUniversity of Central Florida
and Brandi Gilbert from IndianaUniversity Indianapolis. I've
met both of them through theAAEEBL community at the annual
meetings, prior to the pandemicin person and since then online.

(00:52):
Amy has also been a member ofthe AAEEBL Digital Ethics Task
Force since 2019 and has beeninstrumental in getting the Task
Force off the ground.
Amy, let's start with you.
Welcome back to the podcast.
With the first time on thepodcast, we talked in 2023 about
one of our Digital EthicsPrinciples, which was
'Visibility of labour'. But thistime, we are going to chat about

(01:15):
another passion of yours ineducation, which is high-impact
practices. Can you please sharewhat your current role is?

Amy Cicchino (01:23):
Yeah, thank you so much for having us. I am an
Associate Professor in theDepartment of Writing and
Rhetoric at the University ofCentral Florida. I'm also lucky
enough to direct the UniversityWriting Center there, so a bit
of a title change since lasttime we talked.

Yes.
Congratulations on that switch,not just in roles, but also
universities earlier this year.
Amy, why do you teach withportfolios?

I really enjoy portfolios because it's an
opportunity for students to telltheir stories about learning and
to practice some of themetacognitive skills that we
know are just so important inmeaningful learning and
professional development, and soI love portfolios for so many
reasons. They're digital,they're student centred, they're

(02:11):
reflective, they're creative. Sofor all of those reasons and the
benefits in professionaldevelopment and assessment, I
lean in always to ePortfolios.

Can you please remind me for how long
you've actually been usingportfolios?

I made my first ePortfolio as a graduate student
at Florida State University in2015.

That's a good time away. I think I met you for
the first time at BronxCommunity College when we had
the last pre-pandemic AAEEBLAnnual Meeting, which was also
the inception point for theAAEEBL Digital Ethics Task
Force.
Now over to you, Brandi, what doyou do at IU Indianapolis?

Brandi Gilbert (02:54):
Hi, thank you for having us. I am the Director
of the Life-Health SciencesInternship Program in the
Division of UndergraduateEducation. So for the long-time
ePortfolio people, IndianaUniversity Indianapolis used to
be part of IUPUI, so the oldschool AAEEBL people probably
know us from that.

Yeah, and you've been the Director for the
Internship Program for quite awhile now, having been able to
really also consistently putportfolios into practice. When
did you encounter portfolios forthe first time?

I had to consult my own ePortfolio for the actual
dates. So looking back, I wasteaching a first-year seminar in
fall 2010, and it had aportfolio assignment where
students printed out andcollected things in binders.
That was not fun to carry homein multiple canvas bags to do
the grading. Fortunately for me,our campus was working on

(03:50):
integrating ePortfolios intofirst-year seminars. So the next
year, I was able to switch infall 2011 and start to use that
with my class. I figured this isworking, so why can't I use it
with our internship programme?
They were also doing a projectto extend that use past the
first-year seminars, so iteasily fit into that.

How many students typically go through
your internship programmecreating a portfolio on an
annual basis?

Back when we started, it would have been 50
interns per year. Our numbershave since increased to 75, and
this year, we have 114 studentsdoing ePortfolios.

That's an amazing number, and that is also
really only one area of theuniversity. It's not all
internships across becauseyou're only looking at the
Life-Health Sciences. Both ofyou have been involved in the
high-impact practices communityfor a while now. Amy, do you

(04:53):
want to briefly summarise for uswhat are high-impact practices?

High-impact practices are a set of
educational practices thatresearch has established can
really have a transformationalimpact on student success and
learning, and especially forstudents in historically
underserved groups. So when yousay high-impact practices, most
of us are drawing on the AAC&U'slist of high-impact practices,

(05:18):
but the scholarship really cameout of Kuh and O'Donnell's 2013
work. They created a report onscaling high-impact practices
that identified eightcharacteristics, eight things
that make these educationalpractices high impact. Then in
2021 a group of researchers ledby Jillian Kinzie, studied
racially minoritised students'HIPs experiences, and they added

(05:41):
two more elements.
Yeah, the AAC&U list is good,but in the HIPs in the States
community, we like to say thatthose characteristics, those 10
elements of high-impactpractices, those are what really
matter as we're developing andscaling and assessing HIPs.
That's why, starting in 2017,Kuh, O'Donnell, and Schneider
have started to add this caveatthat HIPs will only achieve

(06:03):
their promised impact, "whendone well".

Amy, you mentioned that there are
characteristics that identifywhat a high-impact practices.
Can you please let us know whatthose are?

Sure. So again, these are things that when you
design high-impact practices,they help fulfill that high
impact promise. And so that'shigh expectation level;
significant investments ofeffort over time; substantial
interactions with faculty andpeers; experiences with
diversity; frequent, timely, andconstructive feedback;

(06:39):
opportunities for real worldapplication and relevance;
public demonstrations ofcompetence; opportunities to
reflect and integrate learning;the ability to make a difference
for others; and a sense ofagency and accomplishment.

Listening to all of these characteristics, it
makes sense why then in 2016ePortfolios were added as the
11th high-impact practicebecause really it demonstrates
all those characteristics thatwe've just heard. It is
engaging, it is publicdemonstration of knowledge and

(07:15):
insights and skills and alsofeedback, collaboration, and the
like and really impactfullearning.
Why was it so significant forthe portfolio community at the
time to have portfoliosestablished as high-impact
practice? Amy, do you want tocontinue with that?

For those who maybe haven't heard of this
moment where ePortfolios wereadded, there's a great article
in IJep, the InternationalJournal of ePortfolios, by Eddie
Watson, George Kuh, TerryRhodes, Tracy Penny Light, and
Helen Chen that talk a lot aboutthe importance of this
recognition. But I think theePortfolio community, they

(07:56):
existed long before thisdesignation, and so it's really
important to recognise that, torecognise the research that I
think culminated in theePortfolio recognition for
high-impact practices, and thefact that it kind of codified
the important role thatePortfolios play in meaningful

(08:17):
educational experiences.
I hope that it's significant ingiving ePortfolio scholars and
practitioners the tools neededto advocate for the resources
that they need to develop andlead ePortfolio projects well. I
think it can also create a goodentry point for why people want

(08:39):
to start learning aboutePortfolios and practising
ePortfolios. There are a lot ofuniversities out there, they
want their students to havehigh-impact practice experience
before they graduate, and nowePortfolios become another
avenue for achieving that goal.

Do you remember when you got involved
in that and why HIPs are soimportant for your own practice?

I joined the HIPs in the States community, I
don't remember the year, butJerry Daday had recently moved
from Western Kentucky Universityto what was IUPUI, and we
started to talk because of hiswork with engaged learning. He
took me to the HIPs in theStates Conference, and then we

(09:23):
went again the next year. To me,it was a great way to find
community outside of justinternships or my programme is
essentially on campus studentemployment, and there's some
undergraduate research thrownin. So I don't feel like I have
just one scholarly home, butHIPs in the States kind of

(09:44):
brought that together into oneplace that I could go to find
colleagues who were workingtogether toward these
high-impact practices.

Do you remember if there was anything
that then made it easier for youto talk about portfolios on
campus, since you now had thislanguage of it is a high-impact
practice, like other high impactpractices?

Our campus did start to really ramp up and make
ePortfolio a much more visiblepart of what we were doing.
Prior to that time, it wasindividual people who were
really interested in doingePortfolios as part of their
work, but we started thatePortfolio office, and what is

(10:27):
now on our campus, theePortfolio Studio.

Amy, at that time, I think you were still at
Auburn University. Did you see ashift of portfolios having
become a HIP?

Definitely, I think not only was there greater
enthusiasm around ePortfolios,but I think we saw ePortfolios
start to be added to strategicplans and quality enhancement
plans as part of that largerconversation about HIPs access.

So sometimes naming something and making it
part of a framework can bebeneficial, so that people have
something to point to and thenalso see it in the bigger
picture of where, especially theportfolios, are then situated
amongst capstone courses, wherewe hear a lot of people talk
about those work-integratedlearning experiences, the

(11:19):
feedback, diversity, and all ofthose areas because, of course,
they do not stand on their own,but are really nicely connected
and influence each other.
Amy in your role that you have,and also the roles that you held
at your previous institutions,how do you support your
colleagues in implementing HIPs?
Do you have a strategy thattypically works well for you?

Yeah, I think drawing on your point about
shared language, creating ashared language around
high-impact practices is reallyimportant. And in my approach, I
really like to start with those10 characteristics of
high-impact practices. So Right,like what makes something high
impact? It's not just that wesay students are going to create

(12:05):
a site, they've created a site,I can check the box, they've all
been touched by high-impactpractice. But rather, right, how
have we designed the ePortfoliocurriculum and experience to
have students do those things,to invest their time, to
interact with peers, to shareand demonstrate their
competence, to reflect on theirlearning, to apply it to the

(12:26):
real world. How have thosecharacteristics really developed
this high-impact learningexperience?
I always return to those 10characteristics. I just love
them so, so much. I also reallyjust to shamelessly plug the
Digital Ethics Principlesdeveloped by AAEEBL's Digital
Ethics Task Force, I think thatthat resource, again, can

(12:48):
provide really helpful standardsin what it means to practice
ePortfolios equitably and well.
For me, I think, as I'm talkingto colleagues about ePortfolios,
those conversations have to getbeyond the technology. They have
to get beyond ePortfolios as asingle assignment, really
digging into the process, thelabour, the system that's going

(13:08):
to support a larger commitmentto high-impact teaching and
learning.

Brandi, did you and your team also create
resources that are around theHIPs in general and how your
staff and faculty can work withthem?

I can share that with my programme we are often
used as an example, so I'm happyto share our ePortfolio prompts,
the rubrics we use, assignmentswe can share that other people
can use. So we're definitelyused as an example and a
resource.

Brandi, can you share one example of a
successful portfolio use withinyour area that illustrates how
the teaching and the learningimproved when you switched to a
portfolio approach or when youincorporated portfolios?

Yeah, I can talk at a campus level, but also my
programme because it goestogether. So for some
background, my program used tohave a poster session as our end
of year showcase, alongsideother units doing similar end of
year things for co-curricularprogrammes, capstones, academic
programmes. When the pandemichit, we all had to go virtual

(14:25):
quickly. We were able to do thatbecause many of us were using
ePortfolios.
So that early online showcasebecame what is now a website
repository of ePortfolios acrossour campus, sharing student work
across experiences anddisciplines. At the same time
that gave me an excuse to makesome much needed changes to the

(14:47):
evidence and the artefacts thatwe want interns to share at the
end of the experience. Beingable to give students choice in
what they share and having it ina mode that allowed multimedia
really opened up thepossibilities for interns to
share authentic evidence of whatthey learned and contributed to
their work beyond just researchposters.

(15:08):
Our showcase is back in personnow, but we're continuing to
have them share theirePortfolios on laptops with
visitors rotating around theroom. Interns share artefacts
that they created that areactually used by their
internship sites, such as videosor handbooks to train others in
the lab on a process or atechnique. We've got podcast

(15:30):
links to podcasts that ourstudents have produced or social
So using ePortfolios saved us asa campus when we needed to pivot
media posts they've designed,documents and flyers they've
created that are given topatients or to recruit for
research, manuscripts they'vesubmitted to journals, and
PowerPoint slides that ourstudents are presenting in their
lab meetings.

(15:50):
quickly, but also now, internsare more excited to share these
meaningful examples of theimpact of their work. The
showcase visitors are moreengaged because research posters
can be a little intimidating,but when a student is talking
like really excited about workthat they did, it's much easier

(16:13):
to ask them follow-up questions.

I love that you're also emphasising the
multimedia components of theportfolios and make sure to
include the link to yourelectronic showcase that's on
the IU website, so thateverybody can check out some of
those examples for themselvesand see how rich all of the
portfolios are that the studentscreate.

(16:37):
Brandi, what support do you,your team, or learning designers
give to students creating theirportfolios? Do you scaffold the
practice?

Yes, very much.
It's the only way we all getthrough this in one piece
[laughs]. So we have thestudents for the entire academic
year, which really gives us theopportunity to scaffold from the
beginning of fall semester,beginning of their internship,
all the way through thatshowcase. So we have them break
up the ePortfolio into smallparts throughout the year.

(17:11):
They're primarily adding theirreflections as they go, and then
revisiting those in the spring.
For that final artefact, we do alot of scaffolding. We meet with
them at the beginning of springsemester, after they're settled
and know what's going on, andhelp them start to think through
how they might select what theywant to share, encourage

(17:33):
conversations with theirinternship supervisors -
obviously - of you know, how arewe going to choose this? And
then we have former interns whowork with us as student
ambassadors, and they're alsoavailable as peer mentors, peer
consultants to help them withthe logistics of getting these
things into their ePortfolio,but also just having

(17:53):
conversations to help them thinkthrough what they might include.

Do you then also have a template available
for students who would like tohave a bit of structure already
established beforehand?

Yes, we have a template, and the IU
Indianapolis ePortfolio Studioalso helps anyone on campus
upload a template into GoogleSites, and I believe, they said
they can also do Wix now. Sothey have the ability to help us
if we create a template, thenthey can make it so that it's
easily accessible to ourstudents.

Fantastic.
Amy, do you also have an exampleof using portfolios within a
programme or a course thatillustrates how the learning
processes have improved sinceputting a portfolio into place?

I'm going to shout out one of my colleagues here at
UCF. At UCF, they useePortfolios a lot. They're
embedded pretty much at alllevels of student learning in
the Department of Writing andRhetoric. But our First-Year
Comp(osition) Director, Dr ShaneWood, has just done a stellar
job leveraging assessmentePortfolios in our composition

(19:06):
series. They have really changedthe way that faculty and
students talk about the learningoutcomes in the programme.
They've yielded reallyimpressive assessment data.
Those composition students willcome into the Center, and I'll
hear them talking with theirtutors about their favourite
learning outcome. They just feelsuch an immense ownership over

(19:27):
the learning goals of thecomposition programme now. They
have smart reflections, they'reexcited to pull artefacts. It's
just really allowed them todrive their learning and that
general education requiredcourse in a way that I think is
so smart and such a good way tovalidate students while also

(19:48):
practicing good assessment.

Do you, Amy, also have examples where
portfolios are not just used forassessment on your campus?

No, we do also do showcase portfolios at our
undergraduate capstone level, atthe graduate level. I'll shout
out our Writing Center. Ourtutors are making showcase
ePortfolios this semester aspart of their theory of tutoring
course requirement. And so notonly are they practicing
reflection and integrativelearning, they're also

(20:19):
explaining why tutoring mattersto external audiences in their
disciplinary community.
And so, of course, our Writingand Rhetoric students are
talking a lot about writing andcommunication, and so there's
maybe an easier fit there. Butwe also have tutors who are
science majors, who are computerengineers, who want to go to law
school. It's really refreshingto see them make that connection

(20:43):
between their work in theWriting Center and the work that
they'll do in the next stage oftheir professional development.
They're able to do that becausethey have such a strong
foundation of ePortfoliothinking already from the
general education course thatnow when we talk about a
showcase ePortfolio, they knowwhat an ePortfolio is. They know

(21:04):
how to ePortfolio, and now weget to really just level up
their audience and theirpurpose.

Brandi, have you seen examples of students
that started out with aninternship portfolio with you
and then also continued using itor used it in a slightly
different context?

Yeah, I would say our ambassadors, I ask them
to keep adding to it, and oncethey do, I think they realise,
'Wow, this is really helpful forme to keep up.' They treat it
like aérsume, but with way morecontext and detail and being
able to explain why I chose thisparticular experience, including

(21:46):
more artefacts. They start toshare things that they've done
as ambassadors, and that'sreally cool to see.

Which reminds me of the peer mentors that are
at Dominican University ofCalifornia, where students
support other students increating portfolios and
especially also in a first-yearclass, making it a good
experience for the students tothen also continue with their
portfolios.
In October 2025, the AssessmentInstitute was held again at

(22:16):
Indiana University, and HIPs inthe States is a regular stream
within that conference. Brandi,is there anything from that
gathering that you'd like tocall out in regards to maybe new
research or new insight,practices that people have
shared around high-impactpractices?

One thing I appreciate from this conference
is that the different types ofHIPs represented are all really
different, but they do sharethose core characteristics, so
you can attend any session andstill take something away that
you can adapt and apply to yourwork.
This year, I feel like the mostimportant thing was having that

(22:59):
community and being able todiscuss current challenges in
higher education that are morethan what's just impacting
internships and ePortfolios.
It's just higher education -it's a little rough right now. I
did attend a session by othercolleagues from our track
leadership, and they werediscussing current teaching and
learning research topics acrossHIPs, so being able to come

(23:20):
together and talk about some ofthose challenges, but also talk
about something like, what doHIPs look like at two-year
universities versus four-yearuniversities? What are the
unique challenges?
I'll also shout out Amy. She wason a panel that was a helpful
discussion about the challengeswe're all facing with engaged

(23:41):
learning and high-impactpractices. I really enjoyed
that, I felt less aloneafterwards, and also being
positioned in a conferencethat's all about assessment can
really help strengthen ourgeneral knowledge of assessment
or even about how our assessmentof ePortfolios and learning can
be used at an institutionallevel.

Brandi hit the nail on the head. The goal of
that panel, I think, was just toarticulate some shared
challenges that we're seeing,especially in the United States,
around how people perceivehigher education, how people
want to fund and support highereducation, and we see
high-impact practices andePortfolios being a wonderful

(24:23):
way to make that case, to makethat argument.
I'll also say I did attendDebbie Oesch-Minor's ePortfolio
session, which was reallylovely. Debbie leads the
ePortfolio programme at IUIndianapolis. She always just
has wonderful student examplesto share. And when it comes to,

(24:43):
I think, being smart in how youexternally communicate your
portfolio programme, what itaccomplishes, what it does for
students, that was a panel whereI could be doing more to
articulate our impact toexternal stakeholders at my
university.

I find that also nicely shows that by making
these things public, it iseasier to talk about them, and
then you can also more easilymake those connections because
you have the examples available.
You know how somebodyimplemented something, and then
bring that into your owncontext, together with any of
the other HIPs that you mightwant to integrate.

The other thing that I think we see every year
at the Assessment Institute arefolks who want to, like, get
started with portfolios, becausethey see just what a wonderful
way they can externallycommunicate the experiences that
students are already havingthrough other HIPs. And so even
if ePortfolios aren't the topicof the presentation, sometimes

(25:41):
ePortfolios still come upbecause the presentation just
fits an portfolio model so well.
You'll get an ePortfolioenthusiast in the audience, like
Brandi or I [laughs], and we'llsay, 'Have you tried
ePortfolios?'

The ePortfolio can also be one of an
umbrella HIP because you can useit in any of the others, and you
can pull things out andrepresent all of them in a
portfolio. Now, before we getinto our quick answer round, is
there anything that you'd wisheverybody knew about portfolios,
Amy?

I wrote down some thoughts on this document,
Brandi and I have, but I'mturning, I'm steering away
because this conversation aboutthe Assessment Institute jogged
my memory. We are so obsessedwith AI right now, and there is
a lot of, I think, panickedresponse that, how will we ever
know if students are learning,truly engaging with

(26:35):
metacognitive practices? And Ifeel like the answer is
ePortfolios, and we've beendoing this already for a really
long time.
If there's something I wisheveryone knew about ePortfolios,
I think it can solve some of theever present and some of the
more recent challenges thatwe're experiencing around
teaching and learning. So Ithink it can help students feel

(26:57):
connected to what they'relearning. It can help them
reflect, it can help them engagein a process of composition and
knowledge acquisition, and so Iwish people knew that
ePortfolios just might be thesolution that you are looking
for.

That ties in really nicely also into the
workshop that Christine Sladeand Michael Sankey and I had at
Eportfolio Forum just the otherweek, where we did look at how
AI can be used in portfoliopractice, in many different
scenarios. Because, of course,AI doesn't stop at portfolios,
even though portfolios can be ananswer, so that there can be

(27:33):
mindful integration of AI, butthen at other times, also
mindful leaving out AI andgiving students the space to
express themselves and their ownexperiences without being
mediated through a largelanguage model.
Brandi, what do you wisheverybody knew about portfolios?

I wish they knew that ePortfolios can be an
effective way to help studentsshare who they are and what
makes them unique. So from myvery narrow perspective, I work
with many students who arepre-professional, and they all
look alike on paper. They allhave the same majors, right? The
same courses, the same basicvolunteer work, shadowing,

(28:21):
undergraduate researchexperiences, but everyone who
applies to med school, forexample, has that same
checklist.
An portfolio can help themreflect on all of that and
gather evidence of their why.
Why did I do these experiences?
How did that resonate with meand help them practice
explaining that before they evenget to the application personal

(28:45):
statement or they start toprepare for those interviews. So
it's really communicating whothey are and what they've done,
but why it mattered to them.

And not just being a résumé and a person with
a name and experiences, but alsoreally being an actual person, a
whole person, who bring in theentire personality, and
therefore everybody's going tohave a different experience.
So now to our quick answerround. I'll start with Amy for

(29:15):
the first question. Which wordsor short phrases do you use to
describe portfolio work?

Reflect, curate, and narrate.

Thank you.
Brandi, what are your words orphrases?

Show and tell.

Oh, fantastic. Brandi, what tip do
you have for learning designersor instructors or directors of
an internship programme, such asyours, who create portfolio
activities or try to implementportfolios?

Especially for people thinking about
implementing, think through thecontext. Are they coming in with
ePortfolios from something elseand how you might adapt your
existing activities orassignments to tit instead of
thinking that you need to createsomething brand new from
scratch.

Amy, what's your most important one you'd
like to share?

A special thing about ePortfolios is they centre
student voices. And so how canstudents be partners in the
creation of ePortfolioprogrammes and assignments?

I love that collaborative aspect. Last
question for the two of you,Amy, let's start with you. What
advice do you have for portfolioauthors, for your students?

I would say, play, be creative. Have fun with
ePortfolios. There are so manytimes in the education system
where we have to fill in a boxand fill in a form, and it's
very tight and restricted andguided. EPortfolios are so not
that because it's such a switch,ePortfolio authors, especially

(30:51):
students, can feel reallyoverwhelmed by that process. But
I would say, it's okay lean in,right? Like 'trust the process'
to draw on a Yancey-ism there.
Just have fun with it.

Thank you.
Brandi, what is your advice?

Very similar to Amy, make it your own and don't
be afraid to use your own voice.
It doesn't have to be as stiffand formal as a class assignment
or research paper. Some of myfavourite ePortfolios, if you
hadn't told me it was thatstudent writing it, I could
still identify this is thatstudent because it sounds so
much like them.

Thank you so much for both of you, bringing
in the personal, bringing in thewhole students, and also
instructors into the portfolioexperience and making it about
them. Really appreciate havinghad the chance to talk with you
about your work, and especiallyin regards to high-impact
practices, and look forward tofurther conversations. Thank you

(31:48):
so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now over to our listeners. What do you want
to try in your own portfoliopractice? This was 'Create.
Share. Engage.' with Dr AmyCicchino and Brandi Gilbert.
Head to our website,podcast.mahara.org where you can
find resources and thetranscript for this episode.
This podcast is produced byCatalyst IT. Our next episode

(32:16):
will air in two weeks. I hopeyou will listen again and tell a
colleague about our podcast sothey can subscribe. Until then,
create, share, and engage.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Amy Cicchino & Brandi Gilbert: Portfolios as high-impact practices