CREATING AN E-PORTFOLIO Sara Pavan May 3 rd, 2016

WHAT IS AN E-PORTFOLIO? E-portfolio: online tool that allows you to showcase your achievements and provides you with an opportunity to reflect on the development of your learning process.

WHAT IS NOT AN E-PORTFOLIO? E-portfolio is NOT a personal website! -It provides more space for detailed description than a website -A personal website is a representation of your skills and how they are related at any given time; conversely, an e-portfolio allows you to tell the history of your achievements and accomplishments in a chronological order -An e-portfolio provides space for different aspects of your learning, your research and teaching, while a personal website requires brevity

TAKING A LOOK AT MY E-PORTFOLIO ?presId=25283https://mydesire2learn.com/d2l/eP/presentations/presentation_preview_popup.d2l ?presId=25283

IMPORTANT FEATURES OF AN E-PORTFOLIO 1) Left-hand side bar to list all the areas of achievement you want to showcase 2) Each page allows you to describe the learning process for each particular area of achievement (e.g., “Imagining the Future of Canadian Graduate Education”) 3) Each section of a page has a title (Bright-space forces you to have a title) – benefit of clarity about the added value of each sub-section of a page

THE MUST-DO’S OF AN E-PORTFOLIO ENRICHED CONTENT IMPORTANCE OF ENRICHED CONTENT - Add images. A long page of text without images looks uninviting once online. - Provide links whenever appropriate. - Link your e-portfolio to the appropriate social media platforms (specific updates only need to be made once).

THE MUST-DO’S OF AN E-PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZE YOUR BIOGRAPHY - Important to present yourself using your personal touch – not a list of skills, but how you uniquely combine them together (be yourself!) - Use relevant keywords (so you can be found more easily) - Choose pictures that represent you

THE MUST-DO’S OF AN E-PORTFOLIO BREVITY AND STYLE - Be as succinct as possible. Even a short piece of text looks very long once online. - Constantly check what your pages look like when they are online. - Speak of yourself in first person.

THE MUST-DO’S OF AN E-PORTFOLIO FREQUENCY of UPDATES - Update your e-portfolio as frequently as possible. Any online resource that looks stale does not communicate the engaged and professional image you wish to convey. - New publications, conference presentations, new initiatives or significant accomplishments should be posted shortly after they happen.

WHY IS AN E-PORTFOLIO USEFUL? - Once you have made the effort to describe your achievements, you will never have to worry about providing short summaries of your research or of your community engagement - you can just provide the link to your e-portfolio - Portfolio is a flexible instrument – you can provide information that is relevant to the academic job market as well as to the non-academic job market

E-PORTFOLIO’S AND THE JOB MARKET - You can link your e-portfolio to your personal website. You can use your website to introduce what you do in a snapshot and refer readers to your e-portfolio for more details - E-portfolio part of an online job-searching process. You can decide where to post relevant information about you and provide potential employers with access to that specific information

EXAMPLE OF WEBSITE/E-PORTFOLIO COMBINATION - I have a personal website with my e-portfolio linked to it. - Personal website provides summaries; e-portfolio provides details

QUESTIONS? You can contact me at

THANK YOU!