Welcome

Welcome to the wonderful world of digital portfolios or as some call them “ePortfolios.” In this chapter, you will learn the “what” and the “why”  as well as the different types and basic parts of a portfolio. In addition, you will view a variety of different portfolios. Let’s start with the “what.”

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is you telling your story.  For years, people assembled a notebook of their work to share with others, now most people put that work online. It goes by many names “ePortfolios,” “digital portfolios,” “digital dossiers” or just plain “portfolios,”  but the goal is the same–to tell your story about who you are and about what you have learned.  According to the American Association of Colleges and Universities, it is ” a personal website used to deepen student learning through reflection on, and curation of, work products produced across the college experience.”

There are many types and purposes for portfolios.

Types of Portfolios 

Professional Portfolio

Designed to showcase professional skills and communicate educational achievements.

Learning Portfolios

Designed to demonstrate learning in a class or a program.

Program Assessment Portfolios

Compilation of things you learned in your major that are used to assess your learning and often used to assess the program’s efficacy.

Now that you know a little about portfolios, let’s move on to answering the question, “Why should you build a portfolio and why should you make that portfolio available online?”

Why Should You Build a Portfolio?

It Can Help You with Career Focus

Building your portfolio can help you reflect on how your college courses connect to your future career. Research shows that students who reflected on the relevance of their coursework tended to be more motivated in their studies  When college students were asked, “How have you benefited from the process of portfolio development?” One student answered it best when they wrote, “The portfolio development itself is a means of becoming professional.”

It Can Showcase Your Career Readiness

Once you begin to see how what you are learning in college connects to your professional goals, you become more career-ready.  Employers can look at your portfolio and see your past positions as well as how the things that you have done in college prepared you for a career. The American Association of Colleges and Universities reported that most “employers say an electronic portfolio would be useful to them in ensuring that job applicants have the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in their company or organization.” Transcripts are good, “but ePortfolios are better” because they help you to tell your story. Nine in ten employers said they were “very likely” to click on an applicant’s portfolio link and ePortfolios ranked among the top five experiences that according to employer would make them more likely to hire a candidate.

It Can Help You Begin to Think of Your Professional Identity

Creating a professional portfolio helps you to think about your online presence. As you begin to work on your portfolio, it can help you think about what image you project, who you want to be, and how you want others to view you. A portfolio is also a good place to align your online presence by connecting your media in one place. For example, you can connect to your LinkedIn, your YouTube channel, and other media where you present yourself as a professional. Rowley and Munday’s research highlights that the act of working on your online identity can help you find your voice leading to a stronger sense of self as a professional.

It Can Let You Show Off to Your Friends and Family

This may seem like an unusual thing to highlight, but stay with me here. Chances are, you have family and friends who have helped you along your educational journey. For those who are helping to pay your way or helping you by giving emotional support, it can be rewarding for them to see your work. They like to see what you are doing and they like to celebrate your achievements.

This benefits you in several ways. It helps to keep those in your social support network involved. Next, it helps others to see how you are evolving.  Sometimes those you have grown up with have a hard time seeing you as more than just a child. Seeing your accomplishments and reading your thoughts, help them to see you as a professional. Many opportunities come from family and friends who are willing to say to someone they know, “Hey, check out my nephew’s portfolio.”

It Can Help You with Networking

Once you have your portfolio built, you can share the link with potential employers, with graduate schools, and with family and friends. Employers in one study suggested that there are often many good candidates to apply for a job and they are willing to forward information about qualified candidates that they did not hire to friends and colleagues.  One employer said they would be less likely to take the time to mail a resume or even download the resume, but the portfolio made it easy for them to send it forward to interested parties.

It Can Help You Be More Successful in College

You are more likely to push through and persist to graduation because you can “see the point” and can imagine the end goal. A report from the US Department of Education showed that students who build portfolios are more likely to have higher course completion rates and are substantially more likely to return to college from semester to semester.  It makes sense, students who can make sense of what they are learning and how it applies to them are more likely to find meaning in their classes. 

It Can Help You Document Learning

Your portfolio is a useful place to store your grading rubrics,  research papers, and projects. When you upload those and add a personal reflection, it gives you a place to think about your learning. Once you have that in place, you can then show others what you have learned.

Peter Seldin asked students in his organizational behavior class what benefits they observed by doing student learning portfolios.  Here are a few of their answers.

• • • Portfolios capture intellectual substance and deep learning in ways that other methods of evaluation cannot.
    • Portfolios encourage improved student performance.
    • Portfolios place some responsibility for assessing learning in the hands of the students instead of relying only on the judgment of others.
    • Portfolios engage students in what they are learning so that transformation and internalization can take place.
    • Portfolios lead students to relate new concepts to existing experiences and critically evaluate and determine key themes.
    • Portfolios show evidence and learning that stems from deep reflection.

Reflection is at the very heart of portfolio learning. “Through deep reflection,” Seldin writes, “Students explain what the evidence shows about what they have learned.  They tell their own stories, assess their own strengths and weaknesses as learners, evaluate their products and performances, reflect on past learning, and think about paths for future learning.” By telling the story of what you have learned, you are engaging in metacognition– thinking about your thinking. Research indicates that by engaging in metacognition you are learning even more. Portfolios can help you show what you have learned, monitor what you have learned, and evaluate what you have learned.

To understand more, watch this two-minute video on metacognition.

What Are the Parts of an Electronic Portfolio?

Portfolios vary greatly based on the purpose and the audience of the portfolio. If you are in a class and are required to make a portfolio,  check with your teacher to know which items to include.

Here are some of the parts that you may see in portfolios.

Welcome / Landing Page

A welcome page is an invitation for the reader to engage with the content. The welcome page should include the purpose of the portfolio.

About Me

The About Me page is targeted information about you. It is similar to the interview question, “Tell me about yourself.” The goal is not to tell them everything, but rather to begin personal branding. Tell the story of you as a professional or as a student. If it is a professional portfolio designed for career advancement, then “Tell me about yourself” should be answered with content that will make them want to hire you.

For more information, check out the chapter Crafting Your About Me Statement

Professional Photo(s)

Your photo begins to tell the story of who you are. It is the first thing that someone will notice when looking at your portfolio and they will form impressions about you even before they read the first word. Do not use your high school senior photos. It is important to know the audience for your portfolio since some employers do not allow photos on employment documents as a way to reduce bias.

Resume / Curriculum Vitae

Include an updated resume or vita. Before you upload it, make sure to remove your phone number and address since you don’t want to put those on a public website.

This is a good place to add a link to your LinkedIn page as well.

For more information, check out the chapter Crafting Your Professional Story: The Art of Resume Building

Artifacts

Artifacts are the objects that you display in your portfolio that are intentionally chosen to tell your story. They are used to show what you know.  It is important that you choose your artifacts to fit the purpose of your portfolio and that you organize and label them in a way that they forward your story.

Artifacts might be a number of different things: an essay, a photograph, an art project, a blog, a video, a lab report, and much more.

For more information, check out the chapter Showcasing Your Artifacts: Show and Tell What You Know

Reflection and Storytelling

You tell the reader why your artifact matters by writing a narrative reflection. This narrative should connect the artifact to the story about yourself that you are telling.

For more information, check out the chapter Documenting Your Learning and Personal Growth: Critical Reflection 

In addition, you may choose to include stories that help the reader to get to know you. This might be a story of how you overcame an obstacle or how you learned a new way to do things.

For more information, check out the chapter Telling Your Story

Navigation

You are the architect designing not only the content for your portfolio but how you move from place to place. Since your portfolio will likely have multiple pages, it is important for you to have an easy way to navigate these pages and access all the content. In a survey of employers, one wrote, “I really appreciated how I had options that I did not have to look at the whole thing (portfolio) to find what I wanted. I liked having options to see what I wanted to see—to navigate quickly.”

For more information, check out the chapter Designing Your Portfolio: You are the Information Architect

Contact Information

Let your reader know how to contact you. It is best to use a form rather than putting your personal information on the web for all to see.

Watch this video by Anna as she shows you her portfolio and talks you through the sections explaining why she included each category.

Closing

Portfolios can be a helpful tool in your personal and professional development and are an excellent way to show what you know. Now that you know a little bit about the “what” and the “why” of portfolios, you are ready to begin building your own portfolio.

Exercises: Portfolio Reconnaissance Using the Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono created the six thinking hats to critically reflect on ideas. In its truest form, it is used for analyzing decision-making and problem-solving, but it can also be used as a tool of reflection.  As a group, look at three to five portfolios and apply each of the six thinking hats.

1. Wear an imaginary hat. For this exercise, each person in your group will pretend to be wearing a different hat. You should have the same hat color for the whole activity. If it is a small group, you may have more than one hat.
2. Pick portfolios to look at from the list below.
3. Look at each of the portfolios through the hat color. Answer the corresponding questions.  Write down the answers.
4. Share your answers with the group.

Here is how it works. Imagine you are wearing a white hat. When you have a white hat on, you look at just the facts. If you look at a portfolio, you look at what are the key facts they have presented in their portfolio. If you are wearing a red hat, you look at feelings, hunches, and intuition. If you look at a portfolio through the red hat, you think about how it makes you feel. Does it look professional? Do the photos feel consistent with the story? Do you have a hunch that they just did their portfolio to get it done instead of doing it right?

	The White Hat: Known or needed information. - What are the facts?	1. What are some of the facts about the person that you notice from the portfolio? 2. What facts seem to be missing? 3. What story do these facts tell about the person? 4. Who are the potential audiences for this portfolio? Make it personal. What facts do you want to share in your portfolio? Who do you want to see your portfolio?
	Black Hat: Risks, difficulties, problems - What is not working? - What are the risks?	1. What issues do you see with the portfolio? 2. Are there any problematic parts? 3. Are there any challenges with navigation? 4. How might the information they disclose in the ePortfolio be risky to them or their institution? Make it personal. What problems do you foresee when making your portfolio? What is a problem that you see that you don’t want to replicate?
	The Yellow Hat: Brightness and optimism. - What are the positives? - What is the value?	1. How could this portfolio be used to benefit the person? 2. What positive things could possibly come from it? 3. What are the strengths of this portfolio? Make it personal. How has viewing this ePortfolio given you insight and caused you to be optimistic about the process? What is one great idea that you can “steal” for your own ePortfolio project?
	The Red Hat: Feelings, hunches and intuition. - What are your gut feelings? - What are the emotions? - What feelings result? - What are the loves/hates?	1. What are your initial emotions when looking at this portfolio? 2. Summarize this portfolio using 3 different emotion words? 3. What do you love about this portfolio? 4. Just looking at the photos, what emotions do you associate with the person? 5. Just looking at the format, what are your feelings? Make it personal. What are the primary emotions you hope to share in your portfolio? What are some ideas you learned from looking at others that can move you towards that goal?
	The Green Hat: Creativity, possibilities, new ideas, new concepts, new perceptions.	1. After looking at the portfolio, what are some new ideas that you have about what a portfolio is or does? 2. How does the portfolio show creativity? 3. Where does the portfolio spur new ideas? 4. How do the reflections demonstrate growth? Make it personal. What new possibilities to you see from looking at the portfolios of others?
	The Blue Hat: Process, the leader. De Bono used this as a way to look at which process was most useful; we are going to change it up a bit to look at the process and the audience.	1. How might an employer look at this portfolio? 2. How might a program or department look at this portfolio? 3. How could the structure be best adapted for different audiences? 4. In what ways are they limited by the platform? 5. How could they overcome it?

References

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