That’s Not a Career Portfolio — But That’s Good
Building a professional portfolio into your class sounds like a great idea, but what you want is probably a learning portfolio instead.
There’s no blame for people who want to set up an assessment that’s as close as you can get to a professional portfolio. Students benefit from contextualizing and applying their learning, and using an assessment as a springboard into a professional application definitely seems like a huge boon. So why shouldn’t eportfolios always be professional portfolios?
Let’s get the obvious point out of the door, you likely aren’t hiring the students. A professional portfolio, like a resume, should be tailored to a job posting. There can be a lot of great feedback received on an resume or professional portfolio project, but it encourage students to use general, non-tailored applications that can hurt their applications.
Maybe you want your students to be able to use your assessments in the real world as a matter of convenience. But if you put the caveat that it isn’t the final product and it will need tailoring when they start applying, that’s going to undermine a lot of the convenience.
So that learning portfolio, why should we consider committing to that?
First and foremost, a learning portfolio emphasizes not just showcasing your capabilities and mastery in a field, but also your struggles and growth. An ePortfolio is a big project and lets students share the key points of their learning and experience for their instructors. It can also let students highlight the areas that where they are in need of learning in way that you would not display if you were marketing yourself.
Feedback can be a two-way street, encouraging students to talk about the what, when, and how of their learning can help instructors contrast their expectations and planning with student experience and feelings.
So if you’re considering bringing an eportfolio assessment to your course, when designing it consider how students may benefit from the project process as well as the product. And if you want to talk more about tailoring a portfolio project for your course, feel free to reach out!
