M101:Digital Portfolio/Guide

Guides

This guide discusses the benefits and uses of developing a digital portfolio. The guide covers:

• Definition of digital portfolios
• The purpose and use of digital portfolios
• Selecting content and adding to your digital portfolio
• Choosing a platform and tips on joining an online digital portfolio community

What are Digital Portfolios?

Digital or e-portfolios, are a place for you to showcase yourself. They provide a venue for people to store and share their best work. This could include but is not limited to class notes, papers, reflections, podcasts, videos, group projects and your resume/CV. Digital portfolios are usually created using a blog platform like WordPress, Weebly, tumblr, Blogspot or Google sites. These platforms provide an easy to use layout that allows you to add as much or as little content and widgets as you like. Widgets are add ons that could include a comment box, calendar, RSS feed of blogs you follow, maps, and much more. These platforms are an easy way to get started, look professional and appear tech savvy without being a coding expert.

Why Create a Digital Portfolio?

Ever finish a job or a course and leave feeling like you learned so much but have nothing concrete to show from it? Digital portfolios can provide a place and a way for you to collect and mine through the materials you created. Students and professionals everywhere have stacks of paper in filing cabinets or saved on a flash drive that they will never look at again. They cling to the idea that one day they will sort through these heaps and stumble on something profound. In reality, it’s probably not going to happen unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

As digital portfolios are online, public for anyone to see, they incentivize us to stay organized. You never know who will visit your page at any given time: professor, headhunter, employer, future employer, future mother-in-law. The structure creates a sense of responsibility for the author. I would argue that maybe the most transformative and empowering effect of creating a digital portfolio.

One HR trend that has ramped up in the last decade is that hiring managers do a pre-interview google search of its applicant. Getting a glimpse of the man or woman behind the resume is valuable by any metric.

So think about what you want them to find. Do you want your digital footprint to exist only on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms? Or do you want them to see the professional, intellectual side of you? I’ll take a dissertation over a selfie any day.

Dr. Kathryn Chang Barker and Ms. Karen Barnstable co authored an article titled “ePortfolio Success Stories – Wisdom for Trainers.” They asked a group of adults in their course “How could an ePortfolio assist you with your career development or your career transition?” In short, these were their responses.

Digital portfolios allow me to:

1. know myself better and gain confidence.
2. showcase ALL of my education, training and experiences.
3. organize my work and share it more effectively.
4. categorize my varied fields of experience.
5. have a competitive edge over other job seekers when applying for new positions.
6. find the employees that I am looking for.
7. be able to train employees more efficiently and effectively.
8. have a “TOOL” for communication.
9. have a storage place for work that will benefit others.
10. unite organizations with common goals.

Who Should Create a Digital Portfolio?

This is the million-dollar question with an obvious answer. When researching e-portfolios, I was disappointed to see how heavily slanted most articles and links were towards the teacher-student dynamic of education. The danger here is that if the public perception of ‘digital portfolios’ is synonymous with classroom education, it might scare off potential users (or give them an excuse not to build one).

So the answer is: everyone should have a digital portfolio, not just academics or kids. The main reason digital portfolios have been directed towards education can be explained by the propensity for educators to ‘Keep Up with the Joneses.’ Staying competitive, particularly in terms of job placement by means of equipping students with digital portfolios puts forward a higher level of urgency than your average professional.

Increasingly, the indicators are becoming clear that to be seriously considered for a big proportion of jobs or higher-education programs, a person should have an online presence. This means everyone from scientists, authors, managers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and yes teachers, should have a digital portfolio.

What a person chooses to include in their digital portfolio is entirely up to them, but being systematic with structure is important. Categorizing into profession, education and personal is key. In terms of what content to share, my advice would be to follow this simple three step process:

1. Decide what work you are most proud of.
2. Add it to your portfolio first.
3. Organize into easy to find categories and pages.

Portfolios can include assignments from your academic, projects done for a job, reference letters, your resume/CV, or reflections. Ideally, a person would include some combination of all mentioned. Like life, your portfolio should always be a work in progress. When you start, you might only have a few pages or posts, but the end goal is to have a diverse, comprehensive look at your professional self.

Michael Reese and Jon Levy from The John Hopkins University wrote a research bulletin titled “Assessing the Future: E-portfolio Trends, Uses, and Options in Higher Education.” In this resource, they include a quote from a recent graduate student who had just been hired for a faculty position.

“Having an e-portfolio was definitely a huge asset when I went on the job market. Several institutions that interviewed me mentioned that my website was what initially drew their attention to my job application… My new department at Duke is very tech-savvy, and I know I have my e-portfolio to thank for getting my foot in the door there!”

As you are developing your digital portfolio, it's not only important to select the material your want to include in your online space but also what kind of activity you will engage in once the space is created. Digital portfolios are meant to be a space to provide information about yourself, your experiences, skills, and interests but also a space to engage in a discussion with a community with similar interests. This kind of engagement will require more than simply uploading your resume and samples of your work. According to Lisa Gray in the publication "Effective Practice with e-Portfolios - Supporting 21st century learning," an e-portfolio focusing on education should provide information about an individuals, "...achievements, reflections on learning and, potentially, a rich and rounded picture of their abilities, aspirations and ambitions." Developing a dialogue in your digital portfolio will provide a contextual record of the artifacts (e.g. papers, projects, videos, etc.) you upload.

Choosing a Platform and Getting Noticed

Choosing a Platform

One of the most complicated parts of developing your digital portfolio may be choosing a platform. There are many free and fee based platforms that offer an easy way for even the most tech-challenged people to get started. For example, Wordpress, Weebly, Google Sites, and Wix are a few popular digital portfolio platforms.

There are several ways to decide which platform to choose for your digital portfolio. You could consider your needs related to the platforms funcationaility or the socialization aspects of your portfolio. Consider the following questions as a way to begin thinking your online space needs"

1. Do you want to host your digital portfolio?
2. Do you want the ability to customize the layout, design, navigation, and plugins?
3. Do you have some programming skills or do you need a simple user interface?
4. Do you need a lot of service space to host your multimedia and textual files?
5. Where are my colleagues, employers, etc. developing their digital portfolios?
6. What kind of functionality and design is used in my social group?

For an overview of a variety of platforms, visit this link to see the 15 best blogging and publishing platforms on the internet today. The article gives many suggestions when selecting a platform. The article offers a variety of platforms to review and helps you choose which platform suits your needs best.

Getting Your Digital Portfolio Noticed

Once you have created your portfolio, you want to get it noticed. This will take some work on your part to be a part of a community that both shares and discusses content both in your digital portfolio and others. Here are some good ways to get started with getting your portfolio noticed:

1. Connect with e-portfolio experts or people who are just getting started.
2. Frequently check hashtag (#) backchannels that are relevant to your interests and work.
3. Follow people who have had an online presence for an extended period of time and learn from what they do.
4. Add content as often as you can. Never stop adding and organizing. Digital portfolio’’s are only useful if they have content and stay current.
5. Help others out. Comment on their blogs to create chatter. Hopefully they will return the favour.
6. Address your experience creating an e-portfolio in a blog post on your site. Discuss benefits and drawbacks, what helped you get started, and give other recommendations and advice to others who are starting their own digital portfolio.