e-Portfolio

When I was in my Cornerstone course, I had reservations regarding the efficacy of the electronic portfolio (or e-portfolio). I did not fully appreciate the viability of the project. However, the e-portfolio can be a useful tool. Defined within the educational setting, an e-portfolio is a web version of your learning record and abilities. It contains “artifacts” or “evidence” created by you to map and promote your development. For interdisciplinary studies majors it is a useful tool to track your progress and review how your learning talent has progressed.

Let’s talk about what goes into your e-portfolio. You will learn more about all of this when your professor introduces the module, but I will do a brief overview of a few things.

• The first part of your e-portfolio is an introduction. This is where you grab the reader’s attention, tell them why your e-portfolio exists and what will be found in it. Most learning e-portfolios will then contain an evidence page where you display samples of your work throughout your college career. Next will be your work experience; i.e., a resume. This will help you integrate your educational progress with your professional goals. As you advance in your career or graduate school you will also add your curriculum vitae to your e-portfolio. Included may also be any organizations you belong to and volunteer work you’ve done. Links to blogs and webpages are useful for the reader to get to know you a little bit more. One caution regarding your personal websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikis and others is that your readers will be looking at them. Make sure any unprofessional content on these pages are deleted or cleaned up!

• With your e-portfolio you have the opportunity to be creative. Showcasing your three concentrations may prove to be constructive. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to create a page for each and one for your minor and you can organize your evidence that way. To customize your e-portfolio more, you can pick templates, add photos and personalize it for your interests.
  

The purpose of your e-portfolio is to market your accomplishments to prospective employers and graduate advisors. It includes evidence of both your college and workforce careers. The e-portfolio can be personalized to include photos and colour schemes. To be truthful, the example e-portfolios I’ve looked at from others schools have been exceptional compared to what UCF offers. Their choices of templates are minimal and navigating is not user-friendly. Overall, I have to say that considering all of you are seniors it is unfortunate that you had not taken the Cornerstone course earlier on in your college career so that you could accumulate more evidence throughout your other courses. That would have made it easier to utilize the e-portfolio in your future advancements.

Nevertheless, it is a functional mechanism not only for your personal career choice, but also for firms, projects, and themed tasks. Your Cornerstone professor will give you sample e-portfolios from a few institutions. Here is one that I found to be interesting. Navigating them is easy and the purpose is clearly stated. http://eportfolio.citytech.cuny.edu/ePortfolio_examples.shtml By the way, thank you Rachelle for submitting the question.

Participation

I want to thank you all for the interaction and assistance you've been providing each other. I read all the posts and comments and will be addressing a question from one of them shortly. Before I do so, however, I would like to ask you to clarify with your professor how the blogging is supposed to operate. According to my professor, we are to post a discussion topic each week and we are all to comment and post responses about it. It is a conversation via blogging. But my professor wants a new topic each week (preferably on Monday) and full interaction/participation from everyone. It was also stated that your professor agreed to this weekly participation.

No matter how often or what level of participation there should be, I appreciate your feedback and questions. I'm sure as the semester progresses, we will begin to uncover the positive aspects of this project. Also, as we continue in our classes feel free to ask questions and comments as they arise.

Thanks, Karyn.

The beginning 1st Assignment

Devon Alejandro

Name: Devon Alejandro
Preferred email account: alejandrodevon@gmail.com
What are your areas of concentration for IDS major? What is your minor? Major: Health and Criminal Justice. Minor: Anthropology
When do you anticipate graduating? Spring 2010.
What's your favorite subject of study and your least favorite? My favorite subject of study is Science and Music .My least favorite would have to be Humanities.
Want to share your age? I am 33 years old.
If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you go? Dubai
Do you have any pets? NO
What's your favorite book & movie? The Bible and the movie 300.
What's your favorite food/dining experience? My favorite type of food is Chinese. My favorite dining experience would be anywhere that serves chicken. I love chicken.
What do you like to do for fun? Any hobbies? I play basketball and play the piano.
Beach, mountains, or city? I like the beach and the city and I never been to the mountains. I lived in NYC and enjoyed the city life and I like the beach for the scenery.
How many other classes are you taking & what other obligations do you have? Would you like to share anything else? I am taking three classes this summer.Ihave a full time job and deal with my family and friends which is another full time job.
Activity #1: MapQuest I’d like you to go to www.mapquest.com and find a not well known town in any US state. Identify how far it is from Orlando, Florida. Find two to three interesting facts about the town to share with us.The town that I found is Ellijay, GA. Ellijay is 516.32 miles from Orlando, Florida. Ellijay is located in the blue ridge mountains. It’s the apple capital of Georgia. There was a gold rush their in 1842 and you can still find gold nuggets in the streams.WWW.downtownellijay.org.
Activity #2: Wal-Mart OK, we’ve all been to a Wal-Mart. I want you to provide three items that can be found in a Wal-Mart that describe you in some way. Please give a reason as to why the item describes you. www.walmart.com
Basketball-Its my favorite sport and I love watch it and play it.
Cologne- I want to always smell great.
Fruit punch- My favorite drink.
What made you choose interdisciplinary studies as a major?I chose interdisciplinary studies as a major because I like the fact that I can basically personalize my major.
For what reasons did you decide on your focuses/minor?My minor is Anthropology. I love to study the origins of human beings.
Have you had experience with online learning before?Yes, I have taken a few online courses at UCF.
What concerns do you have about online learning?I really don’t have any real concerns with online learning except for computer problems.
Do you think the interaction between Cornerstone & Capstone students will be useful?I think it’s very useful and interactions with students especially with experience is beneficial.
How productive do you think the mode of delivery (i.e.: blogging) will be?I think blogging should be very productive. It allows me to share my personal views and opinions with others.
What is your grade level (Freshman - Senior)? Any further questions or comments?I am a senior!

Interviews

Thank you for introducing yourselves. I am confident with the group that we have that our interaction will be beneficial. Please remember if you haven’t posted an introduction to copy the welcome post and change the answers to reflect yourself; then post an intro. Also, any concerns or suggestions you may have are welcome. Please remember you can email me (feedback is always desirable)!

For our first discussion topic, I decided to focus on interviews. I was informed that the majority of you had concerns about presenting your degree in an interview. I will admit that I have been on quite a few interviews before (I believe practice makes perfect)! In each of these I found out that there are two deciding factors that will land you a second interview or the position applied for. **Disclaimer: when I’m talking about two deciding factors, I mean outside of the requirements like education or experience qualifications, besides mannerisms, etc.**

The first factor is confidence. Confidence, not arrogance! You have to be confident in your presentation and your answers. Confidence in your presentation comes through in how you dress for the interview and your body language. Confidence in your answers comes from being truthful, knowing your resume, and knowing the company & position applied for. The University of Buffalo Interview Guide (http://mgt.buffalo.edu/files/career/InterviewGuide.pdf) provides plenty of information regarding interview skills. Pages three to four discuss researching the company and position; also, on page 15 begins a discussion about your educational experience.

The second factor is playing on the strengths of the question asked. What I mean by this is if you come across a question that may actually point out a weakness, turn the question around to portray a strength. The University of North Carolina provides an Interview Guide (http://www.unca.edu/career/interviewingskills.pdf) that suggests using their STAR formula for answering questions. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result (page two). In other words, select a prior experience and draw attention to the positive actions and results. The guide also provides good sample interview questions on page four.

• Consider this example: Grace has other responsibilities besides work (i.e.: family, school, weekly book group, etc.) that doesn’t permit her a lot of time for working extra or on weekends. In a recent interview, Grace was asked if she would be available for team projects that may require extra hours. Instead of giving the many reasons why she may not be able to fit in more time at work, she could highlight the points of the question: is this person reliable and are they a team player? So a possible answer Grace could provide would highlight that she is consistent in her deadlines, in her last position she was only late twice in three years, she initiated a team project that decreased accounts payable by ten percent, that she is glad to help others meet their deadlines, and that she assisted in the creation of a company softball team. See, Grace isn’t saying that she’s too busy. Instead, she is actually providing points that showcase how responsible and dependable she is, how she takes the initiative, works well with others, and even interacts outside of the workplace.

When it comes to a degree such as ours that isn’t well known outside of the academic world, depicting its strengths and how it can benefit the company is how you market yourself. Although I have not had many interviewers ask about my degree, there is a direct question that pertains to it. Interviewers may ask about your general education experience or your GPA; but I’ve found one question in my interviews thus far that has forced me to actually market my degree to the employer (which was completely unrelated to my concentrations). The interviewer asked, “How will your educational career benefit our company?” Granted this is an open-ended question and there are many ways you can answer this. I would like to hear how you all would respond to this.

Now employers can phrase it any which way they want, “tell me about your degree,” or they can be really blunt and say something like, “what exactly is interdisciplinary studies?” The point is to relate the degree to the company. Perhaps you can tie in the company mission to your response, or if the qualifications of the position require you to work with many departments in the company you can talk about how flexible and versatile your degree has made you. Face the fact: our degree program is new to the career world and they don’t know a lot about it. Yes, you may have to explain it a bit during an interview. Do not become discouraged!!! There are many aspects about the degree you can emphasize. Such as: yes it’s new, but it is adapting with the changing times; studying several disciplines provides you will skills that are transferable to another department, etc. If the employer doesn’t ask about your educational background (perhaps because you have enough work experience – which is generally my situation) there is always a time at the end of the interview where you can ask questions. A good tip is to develop these questions prior to the interview. In your research of the company you may discover two to three questions about the company or the position or the future thereof. You also have the opportunity here to tell your future employer about the strengths of your degree. Our degree is certainly viable in today’s economy and can prove to be advantageous to securing your future career!

I mentioned earlier that I believe practice makes perfect. I also believe that having others critique your responses to questions is effective. Certainly you should utilize friends, spouses, professors and coworkers to help you practice for an interview. Remember, knowing your resume and the company is essential for answering these questions. I don’t know if your class has done this yet, but my Cornerstone class participated in practice interviews through a service called Perfect Interview. If you have reached this part of class yet, feel free to share your interviews with me. If you haven’t I look forward to hearing your experience with it in the future. Either way, I am available if you would like to practice.

I’m going to share with you all my interviews from my Cornerstone class. I hope they help!

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3017853&type=standard

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3017852&type=standard

Dori Dietrick

Name: Dori Dietrick

Preferred email account: Dori.Dietrick@gmail.com

What are your areas of concentration for IDS major? What is your minor? Major: Behavioral & Social Sciences and Health. Minor: Criminal Justice

When do you anticipate graduating? Fall 2009

What's your favorite subject of study and your least favorite? My favorite subject of study is Behavioral and Social Sciences, my least favorite would have to be Math.

Want to share your age? I just turned 29 last week.

If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you go? New Zealand

Do you have any pets? A Yorkshire Terrier.

What's your favorite book & movie? The Notebook.

What's your favorite food/dining experience? My favorite type of food is Mexican. My favorite dining experience would be Cerviche, my husband brought me there last week for my birthday. It is a tapas place, so we got to try all kinds of different things.

What do you like to do for fun? Any hobbies? Work pretty much consumes my life. But, when I get free time, I love to go to the beach, travel, do landscape photography, and relax with my husband and family.

Beach, mountains, or city? That is a hard one. I love them all. I lived in LA and NYC and had an amazing time in the big city life and I love the beach, but I think I would say the mountains are my favorite. It is so nice to be surrounded by nature and it so beautiful in the mountains.

How many other classes are you taking & what other obligations do you have? Would you like to share anything else? I am taking three classes this summer and three in the fall and will graduate in the fall. I also work full-time with a lot of overtime. It is going to be a rough summer and fall, but I know it will all be worth it when I graduate.

Activity #1: MapQuestI’d like you to go to www.mapquest.com and find a not well known town in any US state. Identify how far it is from Orlando, Florida. Find two to three interesting facts about the town to share with us.

The town that I found is Helen, GA. Helen is 521 miles from Orlando, Florida. Helen is full of import stores and the architecture of the buildings are similar to a Bavarian town. There is horseback riding, river tubing, canoeing, fishing, mountain biking and tons more outdoor activities. http://www.helengeorgia.com/

Activity #2: Wal-MartOK, we’ve all been to a Wal-Mart. I want you to provide three items that can be found in a Wal-Mart that describe you in some way. Please give a reason as to why the item describes you. www.walmart.com

Memory cards for my camera. I love photography, so I am always buying them because I take tons of pictures.
DVD’s. I love to lounge around the house with my husband in my free time and watch movies.
Hand Sanitizer. I work in clinical research dealing with infectious disease, so I am very cautious of the spread of germs.The following are questions I’d like you to answer:

What made you choose interdisciplinary studies as a major?
I chose interdisciplinary studies as a major because I like the fact that I can basically personalize my major.

For what reasons did you decide on your focuses/minor?
My minor is criminal justice. I have an interest in why criminals are incarcerated, and how it mentally affects them once they are socialized in prison.

Have you had experience with online learning before?
Yes, I have taken a few online courses at UCF.

What concerns do you have about online learning?
I really don’t have any real concerns with online learning. I feel like education is evolving.

Do you think the interaction between Cornerstone & Capstone students will be useful?
I think it will be very helpful. Anytime a student can learn something from another student that already has the experience I feel like it is very useful.

How productive do you think the mode of delivery (i.e.: blogging) will be?
I think blogging should be very productive. It allows you to stay involved in what you are doing with someone with experience. This is the first time I have ever done something like this, but I am excited to try it.

What is your grade level (Freshman - Senior)? Any further questions or comments?
I am a senior!

Rachelle's Introduction Blog

Name: Rachelle Thomas – phonetic spelling (Ra-shell)

Preferred email account: rthomasUCF@gmail.com This is my e-mail account for school related information and I will respond within 48hours

What are your areas of concentration for IDS major? What is your minor? Health/Behavioural & Social Sciences & Criminal Justice

When do you anticipate graduating? December 2009

What's your favourite subject of study and your least favourite? Psychology/Humanities

Want to share your age? 24

If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you go? I’m a beach lover so I would love to see the beaches of Fiji

Do you have any pets? I have 2 dogs, both of them are boxers one is a female(Zoey) and the other is a male (Fletcher)

What's your favourite book & movie? I’m not much into books or movies because I have A.D.D. and it’s difficult for me to focus for long periods of time, I like watching surgeries mostly and documentaries.

What's your favourite food/dining experience? My favorite cuisine is Italian I love anything with pasta and cheese, but it isn’t on my diet so I don’t get to indulge very often.

What do you like to do for fun? Any hobbies? I work out on a daily basis, it’s my release and my passion, I am very health conscious. Other than that I enjoy arts and crafts such as scrapbooking and painting.

Beach, mountains, or city? City. Beach for sure, I was born and raised in Florida, I just got back from a trip to New York and I couldn’t stand it, I need the sunshine on a daily basis!

How many other classes are you taking & what other obligations do you have? Would you like to share anything else? I am taking a total of four classes this semester in order to complete my B.S. by December 2009. My other obligations are taking care of my house, working part time for Cornerstone Hospice and working out on a daily basis.

Activity #1: MapQuest
I’d like you to go to www.mapquest.com and find a not well known town in any US state. Identify how far it is from Orlando, Florida. Find two to three interesting facts about the town to share with us.

I located Endicott, NY because I just got back from visiting my friends that live there. It isn’t at all what I thought New York would be like since it’s out in the country. It is 1,155 miles from Orlando, Florida. An interesting thing about Endicott is they have this meat marinade phenomenon called “speidie” that originated from the town and everywhere you go in the market places and restaurants they sell a variation of meats marinated in speidie sauce. Another interesting fact is that they are a leader in clean industry and are home to large corporations such as IBM.

Activity #2: Wal-Mart
OK, we’ve all been to a Wal-Mart. I want you to provide three items that can be found in a Wal-Mart that describe you in some way. Please give a reason as to why the item describes you. www.walmart.com

MP3 Player: It is a must have item for me because I’m at the gym everyday and music motivates me to workout harder and longer. I used to play percussion and have always loved music so I couldn’t imagine it not being a part of my life.

Digital Camera: I love capturing my experiences in photo’s and being able to look back on the memories I have created and the places I have visited. Luckily technology has made photography so much more convenient.

Sundress: Sundresses and flip flops are my way of living the Florida lifestyle, I have visited so many places and just couldn’t see myself living anywhere but here, I love the weather and the light airy clothing that you can wear all the time.


Updated * Questions *
What made you choose interdisciplinary studies as a major?
I had so many college credits, it was the fastest way I could use what I had and graduate as soon as possible. It was also offered online which made it a much easier choice for me.

For what reasons did you decide on your focuses/minor?
I already had credits for the Health portion and I was interested in Psychology so that is why I chose Behavioral/Social Sciences. I had previously enjoyed criminal justice courses which is why I chose it as my minor.

Have you had experience with online learning before?
My entire degree is online so this is my 3rd semester of online courses.

What concerns do you have about online learning?
Honestly it's remembering the timelines for all of the different courses.

Do you think the interaction between Cornerstone & Capstone students will be useful?
I hope that it will be useful and it's nice to have a guiding hand with this course since it is demanding.

How productive do you think the mode of delivery (i.e.: blogging) will be?
I think it makes it a little more difficult to keep up with because it's just one more aspect of the course to try and remember to keep up with.

What is your grade level (Freshman - Senior)?
Senior

Any further questions or comments?
I have issues understanding e-portfolio, will help be offered on that subject?