Collect
If you would like to have your students use ePortfolio, an easy first step is to use it for blog or journal entries. The interface looks similar to social media sites, and students would simply create posts as responses to assignments or as journal entries. Students could add pictures to their posts or hyperlinks to presentations or embedded audio or video projects. Collecting samples is one step in building an ePortfolio. As students add samples from their classes and their co-curricular experiences, they can begin to form a more cohesive view of their college experience.
Select and Reflect
Another way to begin an ePortfolio is to have students share a course project and explain its significance to their learning. Reflection is a key component to meaningful ePortfolio work, so encouraging students to add a course showcase project accompanied by a reflection will demonstrate their understanding of the value of the course work. An description, explanation, and reflection of the their showcase project could also display their progress toward one or more course learning objectives.
Connect
As students build their ePortfolio with samples of course work, reflections on their learning, and thoughts about their co-curricular experiences, they may begin to see connections and form a better understanding of their emergent skills sets and knowledge. Students may then reorganize their ePortfolio away from a structure that highlights discreet courses and into a more comprehensive whole that articulates their professional self.
Below are some sample ePortfolios that illustrate varying levels of engagement with the platform. To learn more about faculty uses and impressions, please visit Faculty Voices.
As professors embed ePortfolio in their courses, some have also begun collections of course work. To see a sample of showcase-style collections, visit Jesse Miller’s Food for Thought, which incorporates projects completed in his English Composition course, or visit Amy Amoroso’s Finding Words, which showcases essays written for her Narrative Medicine course.
To begin the process, email Jen Gennaco to request ePortfolios for your students or to learn more about our program.
