Fall 2022 Portfolio Requirements
In order to document and evaluate your learning over the course of the semester, I am requiring the creation of electronic portfolios for each of my courses. This portfolio will serve multiple purposes:
- It provides a record of what you learned over the semester, which makes writing the end-of-semester self assessment (used for the final course grade) easier.
- It serves as a reference for you to use later, should you need to refer back to anything you learned this semester.
- It is a public resource that you will be able to add to your resume and use as part of your job search process upon graduation. Prospective employers will be able to see what you did with greater detail than what is shown on your transcript, should you choose to share the portfolio with them.
Basic Requirements
Your portfolio needs to meet the following basic requirements:
- It must be accessible from a public website without needing to log in or have an account. If you create a new site from scratch, I strongly recommend focusing on HTML and CSS, with minimal use of JavaScript, to make the material easy for anyone with any browser to view and navigate.
- You may use any hosting service that you prefer. It might be preferable to look for a free or paid external provider, since you would have more control in the long run, and the site wouldn’t disappear after you graduate. That said, CCU does offer Mahara as a portfolio management solution. There is a link to it from the Network servers block in Moodle. Be sure to enable public sharing of your portfolio materials if you use it.
- Your portfolio site needs to look professional. Remember that a future employer might find the portfolio as the result of an Internet search, even if you don’t explicitly share it while looking for jobs in the future.
Required Common Elements
The portfolio must include the following elements:
- Your name and contact information (email is sufficient; you may want to take some basic anti-harvesting precautions and list your email address in a human-readable alternative form like “username (at) coastal (dot) edu”).
- An updated resume. If you haven’t yet created a resume, now would be a good time to visit Career Services for some tips on creating one.
Specific Course Requirements
Each assignment in my courses will specify items to add to your portfolio. Add these items as you complete the assignments. You may organize these materials in any way you want within the portfolio site. For example, you could have a section for each individual class. Alternatively, you could group related topics by skill area, which might be more meaningful to a hiring manager or recruiter than course names and numbers.
If you take multiple classes that require a portfolio (from me or from any other professors who do not require a course-exclusive portfolio), you only need to create one portfolio. You will submit this portfolio URL with each assignment in each course, but there should only be a single portfolio site. You can add to this portfolio in future semesters; there is no need to start over. Similarly, if you already have a portfolio started, just add to it. You don’t need to create a new portfolio if you already have one.
