Suggestions for Students (on creating e-portfolios)
Think of your e-portfolio as a lifelong project. As you move through your career, you will begin to remove school assignments from it and replace them with professional accomplishments. As you advance through college, you may even replace some of your earlier work with assignments from upper level classes. You want the e-portfolio to always reflect your best efforts, and if you are doing what you are supposed to be doing—continually learning and growing—the portfolio will always be in a continual state of change toward improvement.
That’s good to know, but it may not help much when you are just starting out as a new college student who doesn’t have a whole lot to put into a portfolio. Don’t be intimidated by portfolios done by people who do have more education and work experience. Just look at those as future goals. In the meantime, keep a couple of things in mind: (1) Any good portfolio requires some time and effort; (2) Any student can make a good portfolio with enough time and effort applied.
If you are having trouble coming up with items to include in your portfolio, consider the following (not necessarily in any given order):
Résumé. An e-portfolio should include a traditional résumé or at least most of the same items that would be found on a résumé. This might include information about your education, work experience, goals, skills, academic activities, certifications, and awards. To create a résumé, look for a template in your word processing program.
Writing samples. The most obvious choices for writing samples would be essays written for college classes, but you may have other compositions you are proud of as well.
PowerPoint presentations. If you’ve done slide presentations for classes, include them in your portfolio. If you don’t have any good slide presentations, consider making one on a topic you’ve studied or researched for one of your classes.
Multimedia projects. If you’ve created video, audio, or any other combination of multimedia for a class or organization, post it to your portfolio. If you have not, consider making a video project on behalf of a charitable organization. This will be mutually beneficial as it might attract support for the organization, and it will give you something to show for your talents.
Web sites, blogs, or social networking. You don’t want to link to things that will embarrass you, of course, but if your online activities are reasonably articulate, intelligent, and clean cut, but might want to link to them from your e-portfolio to demonstrate a broad range of interests and interactions.
Volunteer work. If you’ve done it, tell about it. Provide descriptions of the work you’ve done, photos, or anything else that shows where and how you’ve provided a service to your community.
Photo albums. You don’t want to go overboard with personal photos, but as previously mentioned, sometimes they are appropriate. Pictures of work you’ve completed on volunteer projects, photographs of projects for classes, and even a few personal photos introducing yourself are appropriate.
Book reviews. What you’ve read and what you have to say about your reading selections tells more about what kind of intellect you have than just about anything else. Consider joining a virtual library like Shelfari or Library Thing. These sites allow you to construct an online book shelf. They also give you an opportunity to review the books. Linking to your collection of reviews from your portfolio is interesting and informative to others. You might also consider keeping a book review blog, or you could simply write a few reviews of your favorite books and post them directly to your portfolio.
Memberships. If you are involved in organizations, particularly academic or professional organizations, tell about them and about your role in them.
Personal introduction. An e-portfolio offers a little more room for the personal than traditional résumés. You have more space in which to describe your hopes and your goals, both long range and short. You also have more time and opportunity to tell a little about your personal interests, and you have the chance to let your personality shine in a way it cannot in a simple résumé. Keep in mind, however, that the e-portfolio is still meant to make you look good as a professional, not as someone’s date. Introduce yourself, but don’t forget you should be concentrating on selling your abilities and not your personal predilections. With that in mind, keep any mention of religion, politics, dating habits, and other purely personal issues to a minimum. Use some common sense in that regard. No one says you have to be completely PC, but talking too much about your beliefs in a portfolio that is meant to be part of a job application will make people nervous. Be relaxed. Be yourself. But the self you would be in a job interview, not the self you might become at a New Year’s Eve party.