Many students are finding that online portfolios, or ePortfolios, are the best way to showcase a wide range of their work. An ePortfolio is a series of linked webpages (or a blog) uploaded and maintained by the student - pages that represent you both personally and professionally.
Most of the literature on eportfolios outlines a three-step process: collect, select, and reflect.
As you publish your portfolio online, following some basic principles of design will help ensure that your work makes a splash. The result is an organized virtual space where you can showcase yourself to potential employers.
You’ve spent your time at university completing tasks such as: project design, research, writing assignments, composing a cv, group work, programming, designing products or computer games, and earning grades. All of these are candidates for your ePortfolio. You may have photos of sports participation or voluntary work, bookmarks of favorite websites, personal accomplishments, journal writings, society membership, awards, and hobbies. These are also candidates. Your collection process begins with you mentally cataloging each piece of evidence and deciding how to use it.
Additional evidence, pieces that show your skills as a communicator, a consultant, an engineer, or a designer. Think about:
Thinking outside the box, you can show personal attributes as oral communication skills, reliability and aptitude for planning, creativity and innovation, level of community service, willingness to travel, quality of judgment, and even social responsibility. Some examples:
You should only upload material that you are happy to be associated with.
Try to think of all the material you select as pieces of evidence showing that you are an interesting person. Select material that inspires people to examine your work, and choose artifacts that will demonstrate your growth over time (like a paper from an introductory class as well as a senior thesis). Adopt an upbeat, welcoming tone (“In these pages, you’ll discover exactly what makes me tick”), but also maintain enough professionalism to keep an employer’s critical eye locked on your pages. Some common mistakes:
Some people say that you should only post something online if you’d be willing to show it to your granny! Though you don't need to go this far, perhaps a good benchmark is that you only post material that you can be proud of a year from now, especially if you intend to advertise the URL to employers.
Finally, when selecting material, recognize the value of piggybacking. In addition to posting pages such as your home page, your cv, essays and reports, project designs, and photos, keep in mind that you can readily link your pages to those that others have created. Where logical, provide relevant links to your course descriptions, organizations with which you’re affiliated, or pages that reflect your hobbies and personal interests.
Good reflective writing is about reviewing what you’ve accomplished and projecting value. Some students shy away from reflection, either out of unfamiliarity or because they hesitate to make private reflections public; yet reflective writing is standard and natural to most online portfolios. Smart students realize that the portfolio is the safest place for reflective writing. It’s inappropriate to make subjective, personal comments in a technical paper, cv, or cover letter, while it makes perfect sense in a portfolio. In an eportfolio, you have the space and opportunity to share your thoughts on everything from your personal passions to discussing how you performed in a particular course. The rules for reflection are flexible, but they do exist.
Be selective about where the reflection occurs, and how much of it you use. Don't reflect about coursework on your downloadable cv. Trying to reflect on every single course you’ve taken would be overwhelming both for you and your reader. However, creating a page that summarizes your experience and reflecting briefly on the value of each as you describe it makes perfect sense. (“I valued this job because it taught me how to analyze the network configuration needs of a small business" or “This class taught me to use cascading style sheets - something I will apply to my future web designs.”).
Good reflective writing should have a purpose both for you and your audience. Both of you should be interested in commentary about why you chose your particular major, relationships that you see between your coursework and experience, and what sets you apart from others in terms of both training and life choices. Give examples that show learning, change, empowerment, self-development, problem-solving, and results. Good examples are concrete, providing names, lists, scenarios, dates, definitions, and so on.
What they are doing is not only taking stock of their personal assessment of their growth, they’re also preparing themselves for hard interview questions. (“Tell me about the greatest challenge you’ve faced in life.” or “Argue to me how your education prepared you to work at our company.”) Ultimately, effective reflection online is about learning to speak well in the company of others.
Finally, look for opportunities to write reflective comments on any major portion of your portfolio, including the cv, papers and projects, photography, and so on. The bottom line: If it’s worth a menu-based category in your e-portfolio, it’s probably worth reflective commentary.
The best portfolios share three traits: unity, navigability, and simplicity.
Unity. The more unified the pages of your portfolio are, the more likely we are to stay there.
An example: The page is called “My Design Projects,” and it describes four projects. Each project has a short heading, written in bold red text, followed by a short project description (just 3 - 4 lines long, in black text), and at the end of each description is a link, “Visit the project page.” Between each description is a solid black line to enhance separation, and the background is white so that all text readily stands out. Also, at the left of each of these descriptions is a small screenshot (also clickable) of the project page. Once we go into a specific project page, we see a “Return to My Design Projects page” and a “Return to my homepage” link at the top of the page. This basic form is repeated on other pages, and so we have a strong sense of unity to your portfolio no matter what pages we are visiting.
Navigability. Some of the best ways to aid navigation are the simplest:
Simplicity. Finally, we’re all familiar with the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid!). Don't:
This increases the odds that we’ll turn away from your pages. Ultimately, the best portfolios are those most artfully simple in design, welcoming us at a glance to sit back, relax, click, and spend some virtual time with you. Try to write in plain English! Remember, if you can't express it simply, you may not know what you are talking about! Good luck!