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.
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I haven't finished my e-portfolio, but I like how other people can personalize their portfolio. Do you think that employers will utilize this new tool?
ReplyDeleteIt depends on how progressive the employer is. The medical field in Florida has not caught up with 'creative technology' yet. But companies are quickly finding they can gain more insight into a potential employee simply by googling their names. Being a learning e-portfolio, I doubt employers will be exceptionally interested. However, there are industrial e-portfolios and team/project e-portfolios that employers can use. The real estate agency my sister works for in New York uses them for their employees, as does the hotel my father works for in California. Like I said, Florida is a little behind the times; but that doesn't mean you can't introduce these e-portfolios to your company. Not only would it help bring them into the new creative technology era, but it would also cut down on paper!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Karyn.
I guess I should have gotten more comfortable with e-portfolio earlier. Personally I don't believe that any of my potential employers are going to care to look at it what so ever, it still seems very informal in my opinion and I'm just going to finish it because it's required for the course.
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