Tips & Tools

According to Learn@UW:

an e-portfolio is a digital collection of objects that you feel say something about your learning. They often show how you’ve grown as a learner over time, or they can also be used to show off your best work to other students, instructors and employers.

For students enrolled in Pol. Sci. 400 ‘Careers in Political Science’ and Soc. 496 ‘Professional Development in the Social Sciences,’ the e-portfolio begins as a classroom (internal) tool for compiling students’ assignments, reflections and artifacts demonstrating applied skills and experiences.  In this context, the portfolio itself is intended for use by the student, instructor, and fellow classmates.

But the class portfolio is only the beginning compilation of things that others, including UW alumni and future employers, tell us they want to see. In fact, e-portfolios are a great way for all professionals to showcase their learning and accomplishments, and to reinforce and promote their individual professional ‘brands.’  As they envision, build and manage their e-portfolios students and professionals alike become better equipped to regularly evaluate their current professional goals and learning, and to effectively showcase and articulate their applied competencies to others.

Evidence suggests that common learning activities emphasized in university career courses and programs such as student goal-setting, skills inventories, and project work in applied settings are valuable steps to help students transition into meaningful early-career paths. A related key factor in student success is the ability to effectively articulate and demonstrate relevant knowledge and competencies.  In particular, many employers endorse the use of portfolios as one significant way for job candidates to demonstrate such proficiencies.

e-Portfolios come in all shapes and sizes, depending on a lot of factors including the user’s academic major[s] and early-career goals.  The intended audience a user has in mind should also determine the style, content, and ultimate accessibility of a given e-portfolio. Here are four possible types of e-portfolios students, advisors and instructors might consider for their particular purposes.

1. An ‘internal’ class portfolio for establishing relevant course objectives, compiling assignments and assessing coursework in relation to course, departmental and college learning goals and desired outcomes. In this context only the instructor and students see the portfolio contents.
2. A ‘designed –access’ portfolio for university communities that emphasizes students’ applied learning and demonstrated use of skills and knowledge. Such university communities might include departmental or program alumni, scholarship or fellowship committees, and university curriculum reviewers. For example, students who are setting up career ‘informational interviews’ with alumni or other professionals might share a link to their portfolio ahead of time. This type of portfolio might also support UW graduates’ lifelong-learning objectives as they reengage with UW-Madison programs and alumni networks in the years after graduation.
3. Another ‘designed-access’ portfolio can be compiled by students to share with potential employers or review committees who are screening applicants for specific things, such as fellowships, internships or full-time jobs. Students can develop the portfolio to be made available for review to specific audiences, or to take with them to interviews. By limiting the scope of who can review the portfolio students can tailor elements of their portfolio for specific audiences such as hiring committees for specific jobs.
4. Finally, students can develop and maintain a ‘public-access’ portfolio that is widely accessible online and in social media. This might include embedding the portfolio in a LinkedIn profile, or in the contact information found below email signatures. A major purpose of the public access portfolio is to aid students in establishing and maintaining their particular professional brand that they can shape and reshape throughout their professional lives.

The particulars of your e-portfolio (content, organization, style) will depend on your current status (e.g., student, post-grad., professional), your purpose (expanding your network, applying for things, establishing your brand), and intended audience (your peers, hiring committees, general audience).  Portfolios can be formatted and organized in various ways, including along the lines of common resume categories, or organized by applied skills you want to emphasize.  Here are some common elements found in many e-portfolios of students and early-career professionals. (This is a sample list of possibilities, your list should be tailored to your purposes and profile.)

Your introduction:  This could include things like describing who you are, what are doing currently, what you’ve done in the past, what you hope to do, what you are passionate about, and what you want your audience to learn about you.  In many cases the introduction could be similar to or even the same as your ‘elevator pitch’ or the answer you’ve developed to the ‘tell us about yourself’ interview question.

Your resume:  You can provide a page with your whole resume, or instead provide summary information about things on your resume and then link to your whole resume.  Resume categories can often be translated into headings on your e-portfolio home page.  Obviously, all the strictures about creating effective and flawless resumes apply here.

Examples of projects completed by yourself and/or on teams:  These can include things like policy or advocacy reports, strategic or marketing plans, or training manuals you created.

Examples of your communications skills: Written and/or oral:   These might include letters or memos, speeches you’ve written, newsletters you created, or oral presentations you can share by connecting to outside hosts such as YouTube or Prezi.

Examples of your creative or technical skills:  Graphics you’ve created, websites you’ve designed, flyers or other promotional materials you produced, or data sets you’ve built and maintained.

Examples of your applied research and related scholarly skills:  These might include excerpts or full reports of extensive research and writing projects, conferenced papers, lab reports, grant proposals, or conference poster sessions.

Examples of your administrative/group leadership and productive participation:  Examples might include group leadership roles and accomplishments in campus organizations (e.g., student government, student life, and student advocacy organizations), or in outside organizations.

Examples of internships you’ve completed: Employers rank ‘applied workplace skills and experiences’ very high on their list of preferred job candidates.  But as a student it’s difficult to attain even the minimum experience for jobs you might seek.  Internships are a recognized, effective way to build your applied workplace skills and experiences.

Study Abroad and Related Travel/ Work-away Experiences:  Study abroad experiences offer not only compelling applied challenges and academic experiences in unfamiliar settings, but they surely will be of high interest to those who are perusing your e-portfolio.  Such experiences can also say a lot about your propensity to stretch yourself as a student and young professional eager to experience new ways of thinking and living.

Reflections/ Blog Posts: Part of establishing your professional identity and brand is finding ways to convey what you’re passionate about, what’s important to you, and in what areas have you taken steps to develop special learning or knowledge ‘niches.’  Reflection pieces, for example, in the form of a public blog, can help you reflect deeper about things that are important to you (e.g., issues, causes, technologies, self-assessment, social relations) and can help demonstrate your ‘lifelong’ learning approach to important and complex topics.

Consider where you are now.  Maybe you have a resume you’ve been revising, and have cobbled together cover letters, writing samples and perhaps some other items for the things you have applied for already. But this aspect of our professional development, organizing and sharing our most compelling evidence of learning and achievement, is a lifelong process for even the most impressive and accomplished professionals. Over all my years of teaching career development among college students I’ve found that even the most accomplished students can have difficulty in showcasing all their good work and in communicating that quality effectively to alumni, employers and each other.  This is something we all must attend to.  The good news is that the technology to build and host e-portfolios is much easier, more accessible, and more user-friendly than ever before.

In terms of how fancy and elaborate you should design your e-portfolio, my advice is to do the basics well and aim for more elaboration (including adding more bells and whistles) as needed and as you go.  Also, consider again the purpose of your e-portfolio and the intended audience.  Students in the Social Sciences, for example, will not need the glossiness and visual ‘wow factors’ that students in fine arts, marketing, and architectural design might need.  The aim for all students should be simple, easy access to pertinent information and insights about you that viewers can easily gain for their purposes.    

My e-Portfolio @UW-Madison, Resources and Links:

There are a number of e-portfolio resources and links available to help you build, host and share your e-portfolio.  Such resources include those that are ‘internal’ to UW-Madison, and those that are ‘external.’  My e-Portfolio @UW-Madison emphasizes resources and tools that are internal to UW-Madison while acknowledging that some students and other users will prefer to build and host their e-portfolios using external options.

Internal hosting options are emphasized here for various reasons, including:

–Internal UW resources are those students already pay for with their current university fees.  These include google sites, Microsoft Sway, and Canvas.

–Internal UW resources are supported by UW offices and design labs, including D2L, DesignLab,

and L & S Learning Support Services.

Canvas

Canvas e- Portfolio steps

UW Google Sites

Sway

Users who prefer outside e-porfolio development and hosting might consider:

WIX

• A quick, hands-on YouTube video to create and publish on wix.com
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYwJ8At-wgs
• A more comprehensive YouTube on creating a Wix site is found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYwJ8At-wgs. Very good for helping you develop your e-portfolio purpose, content, and sharing steps.

WordPress

For an example of an e-portfolio in progress, created in Google Sites, visit Joel Clark’s e-portfolio site

See also:

• Clemson University e-portfolio site
• Auburn University e-portfolio site