JOB PORTFOLIO

The portfolio assignment provides me an authentic outcome measure with respect to your experience, and provides you with an authentic and integrated product that demonstrates your abilities to a future employer. In this way, the professional portfolio helps you prepare for professional job-hunting, and provides an opportunity for you to define your professional goals and package them to share with future employers.

The portfolio is NOT supposed to be simply a record of the work you did in the W310 course. DO NOT assemble your portfolio simply to document your course work. The portfolio is NOT a document produced to a standard specification. It must be unique to you and your professional goals -- one of the primary measures of success for your portfolio is the degree to which it suuports your statement of professional goals.

WHAT SHOULD GO IN THE PORTFOLIO?

Artifacts
Annotation
Choosing work for the portfolio
Required supporting materials
Frequently Asked Questions
How should the portfolio be organized?

Artifacts
Artifacts are authentic products or by-products of your activities that serve as indicators of your skills and abilities presented in a manner that is attractive and easy to understand. These activities may have been conducted with a team or alone, inside or outside school. They do not necessarily have to be class projects, IST projects, or anything you have done connected to your degree program -- as long as they are activities that demonstrate skills relevant to your professional goals.
When you are selecting artifacts, remember that they should fulfill several functions:

Provide objective evidence of your skills

Actual samples of your work are the best evidence you can provide of your skills. You may decide to include awards, reviews or endorsements in your portfolio, but these should be used sparingly. Concentrate on using samples of your work to convince a reviewer or potential employer of your skills.

Demonstrate skills appropriate for your professional goals

If you want to work primarily as a technology coordinator, but your portfolio samples are primarily lessonplans -- you are probably not demonstrating the skills most appropriate for your professional goals.

Present your work efficiently and effectively

Your portfolio needs to work in at least two situations:

when people have time to look carefully at each page

when people do not have time to look carefully at each page

Annotation
Annotation is concise, accurate prose presented in a consistent format and serving to explain the significance of an artifact. When your annotation is well done, the viewer of your portfolio gets a complete picture of where this artifact came from, and what it signifies regarding your capabilities. Annotation for each artifact should contain the following categories of information:

Context

Where and when was the work done?

Was it a class project? A professional consulting project? A project completed during an internship?

Conditions

Did you have access to specialists for parts of the project?

Did you work within a budget? A limited schedule?

Did you inherit this project from someone else?

Was the content or the analysis provided at the beginning?

Were the graphics adapted from elsewhere or created as original material?

Scope

Was this a protoype? Draft? Proposal? A revision of existing material?

Did the project go to completion?

Was it developed further after you worked on it?

Was the version you worked on the one that was finally delivered?

Was your analysis used to inform another project?

How many people used it or are using it now?

Role

Did you have a designated role on the project?

What were your major contributions?

Did you work collaboratively? On which parts?

Did your role change during the project?

Present the annotation consistently
Annotation should appear in a consistent format throughout the portfolio so that it is easy to find and scan through. Placing the annotation on colored paper (light blue, beige, gray, or some other unobtrusive color) helps distinguish the annotation from the rest of the portfolio's contents, and establish a baseline "look" for the portfolio.

Choosing work for the portfolio
Choose work that is relevant to your professional goals
No matter how great a project was, it shouldn't be represented in your portfolio unless it is relevant to your professional goals. There are two dangers inherent in showing work that is not relevant:

it dilutes the definition you are trying to create for yourself and usually leaves the impression that you "do a little of everything," which is only a positive impression for a very few professional positions

it tempts people to hire you for the wrong reasons; remember, if you showed it in your portfolio, you are likely to be asked to do it on the job -- think carefully about whether or not you want to be hired as a Website writer and find yourself cranking out Websites as your primary activity!

Choose your best work
It is tempting to put samples in your portfolio to fill gaps that you perceive in your skills or experience, even when that work is not good quality. You are better off leaving such work out of your portfolio and looking for opportunities to do better work as soon as possible. Explaining that you have not had a chance to perfect a skill may reduce your standing as a candidate, but will not leave nearly as bad an impression as that left by a weak item in your portfolio.

Required supporting materials
In addition to the portfolio itself, you must turn in the following items:

goals statement describing specifically the kind of position you expect to hold when you graduate

resume (which may be included in the portfolio also)

list of professional references (2 minimum)

a brief statement indicating who each of your references is, and why you have selected these people as references

These items should be submitted in a separate notebook or report cover, bound together and identified with your name so they don't get lost during the review process.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many samples should be included in my portfolio?

Enough, but not too many! The norm is somewhere between 5-7 annotated samples because this is a number that offers you the chance to show what you can do and not lose the attention of whoever looks through your portfolio. However, you may find that you end up with more oe fewer items. Concentrate on demonstrating your abilities, and then worry about the number of items in your portfolio.

Since I'm demonstrating my own skills, is it ok to include work that I did with a group?

Yes. Your annotation should make it clear which parts of the project you contributed to, and you should credit your teammates either by name or by acknowledging that you worked with a team of 3, team of 5, or whatever.

What if I don't have any kind of original material from a certain project?

Make sure this is really true before you give up looking. If there is absolutely no physical evidence that the project ever took place, investigate whether or not there are artifacts that may reproduced or reprinted. In some cases you can manufacture an artifact, but check with a portfolio advisor first to see what kinds of manufactured artifacts are considered ethical.

Should I reprint all my artifacts so that they look clean and consistent?

Reprint individual items that may have gotten bent or smudged over time. Do not reprint all your artifacts onto a single color of paper or reformat them into a consistent template. When you do that you lose their authentic quality. Put your efforts at consistency into the annotation portions of your portfolio and show your artifacts in their original form.

What about oddly shaped items -- small pamphlets, disks, or oversized print materials?

For many people, this is where your ingenuity will be tested! Some items can be photo-reduced through color copying or plain photocopying so that they fit into your portfolio. For others, you will need to comb the office supply stores to find the right size page protector, bind-in folder or other solution for including non-standard items in your portfolio.

HOW SHOULD THE PORTFOLIO BE ORGANIZED?

Adapted from the Portfolio Expectations Created by Elizabeth Boling

Context	Where and when was the work done? Was it a class project? A professional consulting project? A project completed during an internship?
Conditions	Did you have access to specialists for parts of the project? Did you work within a budget? A limited schedule? Did you inherit this project from someone else? Was the content or the analysis provided at the beginning? Were the graphics adapted from elsewhere or created as original material?
Scope	Was this a protoype? Draft? Proposal? A revision of existing material? Did the project go to completion? Was it developed further after you worked on it? Was the version you worked on the one that was finally delivered? Was your analysis used to inform another project? How many people used it or are using it now?
Role	Did you have a designated role on the project? What were your major contributions? Did you work collaboratively? On which parts? Did your role change during the project?