It would seem that the answer is simple, and to be honest, I was convinced that the owner is the student, that is, the one who constructs it. However, Stieglitz's (n.d.) article presents an interesting point of view. If the ePortfolio was created based on a guideline and in response to assignments imposed on it, it seems that simply using one's imagination to respond to these tasks in a creative and innovative way may not suffice. The fact is that the information presented arises from an imposed need. In this case, I agree with Stieglitz (n.d.), who mentions in his article the study by Ilona Buchem on the psychological ownership of Personal Learning Environments, in which she says:
"One of the most interesting outcomes of the study was the relationship between control and ownership. The results show that, while perceived control over intangible aspects of a learning environment (such as the ability to determine the content or access rights) has a much greater impact on the sense of ownership of a learning environment than perceived control over tangible aspects (such as the choice of technology).
Likewise, Dr. H's post mentions that '... we must not only give students choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning (COVA) over their digital domain but also give them COVA (Thibodeaux, 2015) over their ideas.
To be the owner of an ePortfolio, we must be free to publish and share the content. Once we have guidelines on what to include in the ePortfolio, at that moment, we lose the full ownership right. ePortfolios that have been designed to meet a requirement or respond to an imposed need are not 'solely' the property of the content creator, no matter how creative and unique the information may be presented.
So, my response to the initial question will be: the owner of the ePortfolio is the one who creates it and generates content in it freely, without following any guidelines, and regardless of whether they interact with an audience or do it for their own interest or consumption. If the person who creates content shares the initiative with someone, that is, at the request of a teacher as part of their academic evaluation, or an audience that requires content to learn, or depends on audience interaction to grow and continue generating content, the owner of this ePortfolio is more than the person who writes the information. For me, ownership belongs to both the creator and the audience.
References:
Harapnuik, D. K. (2023, September). Who owns the e-Portfolio? Retrieved from https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6050
Ibuchem. (n.d.). Medien-Didaktik 2.0. Medien-Didaktik 2.0. https://ibuchem.wordpress.com/
Stieglitz, G. a. D. (n.d.). Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning - Educational Research. https://www.pontydysgu.org/2012/09/who-owns-the-e-portfolio/
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