Constructing the Eportfolio

This page will help you think about how to structure your eportfolio as a showcase of your professional skill development.  Think of your weekly blog posts as an ongoing reflection of what you are learning and experiencing – those posts are more for your own learning.  The eportfolio is an attempt to pull your learning together in a structured way so that others can see what you have been learning and working on.

I will outline a structure here – you can follow this structure or create your own if that makes more sense for what you want to do.  I would like all eportfolios to start with the “Eportfolio” front page.

Eportfolio Front Page (create a new page and title it “Eportfolio” – it should be included at the top level hierarchy of your blog site):
This page should include an introduction to you and an introduction to your eportfolio.  You might describe your professional interests, what you are studying, your career goals, etc.  You should also describe what your eportfolio is meant to demonstrate and how it is organized.

Sub-pages (include these as “child” pages of your Eportfolio front page):
Subpages might include:

Separate Pages to reflect specific competencies: You might have a page for “Professional Communication” that could include evidence for both written and oral skills, a page for “Collaboration” skills to show your teamwork abilities, a page for  “Leadership Skills” that demonstrates both your understanding of and your practice of effective leadership skills and an “Emotional Intelligence” page that demonstrates your understanding of and practice of emotional intelligence.

Artifacts (Evidence)
Demonstration portfolios need evidence to support claim of competencies.  For instance, let’s suppose you want to demonstrate to the reader that you understand what it takes to collaborate effectively.  On your “Collaboration” page, you might include the following:

1.  Introduction – describe the context (class, team project), what you were required to do, what you identified in your Leadership Development Plan that relates to collaboration (link to LDP post).
2.  Artifacts – artifacts are any piece of evidence that demonstrates your learning or mastery of a competency.  You might include quotes from your midterm and final peer evaluations that demonstrate improvement on a particular skill.  You might also include a document, powerpoint file, etc. that represents your contribution to a final product.  Finally, you might link to a particular blog posts that discusses this competency (if you have tagged well, this will be easy to find).
3.  For each artifact – describe what it is, how it relates to the competency you are writing about and why you chose that artifact (in other words – how does it demonstrate your learning/mastery of a competency?) Don’t just include an artifact without helping your audience understand why you included that artifact – what does it demonstrate about your learning?
4.  A conclusion of that competency that summarizes your learning and abilities and describes areas you still need to address and how you will do that beyond this class.

Each page and each artifact on each page needs these elements.  You will need to decide how to structure and order your pages for clarity and interest.  Again, imagine that your audience is a potential employer that is interested in knowing about your abilities in these areas.