The ePorfolio

An ePortfolio tells a holistic story about your experiences, not just in your academic career but also in your regular life. An ePortfolio brings everything together in one space that allows you to showcase all of your interests, skills, and projects. At the same time, it will help your articulate your knowledge and skills to sharpen the focus on both.

An ePortfolio allows you to present your work to the world in the ways that best suit you. Whether it's an essay, an internship, an art project, or something else, your ePortfolio will give you a chance to share your success with the rest of the world.

An important part of the Folio Project is reflection. Throughout your academic journey, you will reflect on your work and your contributions to the campus community and the broader community.

Types of portfolios

Professional/showcase:

Make yourself stand out to employers by using an ePortfolio to supplement your resume and cover letter.

  • Include reflections, artifacts, and projects that relate to a consistent theme or objective. This portfolio has a specific audience in mind so tell them what you want to know.
  • Expand on the skills or experiences you list in your resume by including your best and most applicable work samples.
  • Highlight your unique voice with targeted reflections that speak to your audience. Teach them something new about you to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Integrative:

Pull from a wide range of sources to give viewers a zoomed out sense of your interests, hobbies, skills, or projects. This type of ePortfolio tells people who you are.

  • This portfolio should be centered around a theme or objective, but it does not have to be as focused as a professional portfolio. You might not have one specific audience in mind so your artifacts and reflections can be about more topics.
  • Consider a greater emphasis on extracurricular activities, passions, and hobbies than course work or projects.
  • Be creative in all aspects of this portfolio. Think about how you want to share your story and run with it.

Learning:

Consider this an online version of a course binder or notebook.

  • This type is typically assigned by an instructor so that you can keep an organized, online record of your work.
  • You will often be given a specific template to build on and told what content to include.
  • Since you do not get to pick your content, not everything you feature on this portfolio will be perfect. Use it as an opportunity to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses.
  • Even though you will most like be given this assignment from an instructor, your portfolio is still for you. Make it your own and continue to be creative.

Tips for reflective writing

Reflective writing can be challenging because we do not get to practice it often. Part of the Folio Project, and the broader Collaborate Quest (CQ), is to encourage reflective thinking and writing. Here are some tips to structure your reflectiong.

Start with the past

  • Before your experience, what was going through your head? Were you nervous, excited, or indifferent?
  • Were there any actions you took that put these emotions on display? Maybe you anxiously consulted a friend or pondered possibilities alone in a coffee shop?
  • If you were writing a movie about your life, what details would you include to inform the audience about your main character?

Move to the present

  • Explain to your audience how the experience played out.
  • Did your experience meet your expectations or did it surprise you in a meaningful way? What were some of the biggest obstacles blocking your path to success and how did you overcome them?
  • Did you meet anyone who made an impact on you? What were some of the harest, but most meaningful, tasks that you performed?
  • Pack this section with concrete examples to help connect your audience to your story. Clear examples that reinforce your ideas and main points make for a more engaging story.

Finish with the future

  • All of the best stories show the characters evolving and learning from their experience. Did your experience give you a new perspective or change your mind about something?
  • Did you learn a new skill or sharpen a pre-existing one?
  • How might you apply a lesson that you learned through this experience to succeed in the future? Answering these types of questions will give your reader a better understanding of who you are and what you are capable of accomplishing in the future.
  • When writing this section, you might discover something new about yourself.