What Should Go in the Portfolio?
Artifacts
Artifacts are the authentic products of your activities. They serve as indicators of your skills and abilities, and should be presented in a manner that is both attractive and easy to understand. You may have conducted hese activities with a team or alone, inside or outside of 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.
Each artifact should serve to 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. The reviewers of your portfolio want to make up their own minds about the quality of what you can do. |
Demonstrate skills appropriate for your professional goals |
If you want to work primarily in performance improvement, but your portfolio samples are primarily screen shots from Web sites then you are probably not demonstrating the skills most appropriate for your professional goals. What can you show instead of screen shots? Just about anything, including:
-
- executive summaries from various types of reports or studies
- key tables or charts that summarize the data from analysis or evaluation
- project management documents like PERT or GANTT charts
- code samples from programs you have written
- script and/or storyboard samples
|
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 item
- when people do not have time to look carefully at each item
You must show excerpts of work, not a huge compendium of project reports, PowerPoint presentations, and full-length papers. You must select these excerpts carefully so that they represent the most salient features of the larger works for which they are standing as samples. |
return to the top of the page
Annotation
Annotation is concise, accurate prose that explains 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 cover the types of information listed in the table below, but does not have to take the form shown here. In fact, you may develop a much more successful portfolio if you do not use this format than you will if you do. Although you need to include the information below, you can probably do so more gracefully if you develop your own annotation format than if you try to squeeze your own personality into this table.
| 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 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.
return to the top of the page
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 an instructional writer and find yourself cranking out brochure designs as your primary activity, or hired as a media developer and be faced with month after month of Flash authoring tasks.
Of your relevant work, 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.
Although you may have a long list of work assembled when you get to the point of assembling your portfolio (or a great big cardboard box full of project artifacts), don't choose anything for the portfolio until you have created your goals statement. You will find it much easier to follow the advice above after you have written your goals statement.
return to the top of the page
Development project
What is it? This is a single project which spans at least three of the five major ISD components: analysis, design, development, production, implementation and evaluation. Although it is likely that you will have completed this project as part of a course (R641, for example), you may have, with the permission of your project mentor, completed an independent study project or external project to satisfy this requirement for graduation.
Does it have to appear in my portfolio? It is likely that your development project will appear in your portfolio; it is recent work, and should have been done in an area that interests you and supports your career goals. However, it is not required that your development project appear in your portfolio.
The development project and the portfolio are not the same thing. Even if your development project is very large and very successful, it should not be the only thing in your portfolio. The portfolio is not simply a vehicle for displaying your development project, although you may elect to use your development project as one of your portfolio items.
return to the top of the page
Required supporting materials
In addition to the portfolio itself, you must turn in the following items shown below.These items should be submitted in a separate report cover or folder, clipped together and identified with your name so they don't get lost during the review process.
| Masters Students |
Ph.D. Students |
- goals statement describing specifically the kind of position you expect to hold when you graduate (you may include a goals statement in your portfolio, but this one should be specific and thorough enough to explain to your advisor and to the portfolio committee how the portfolio is going to be used and what it is trying to convey -- this will be a different goals statement than the one you might show a prospective employer or a current employer
- resume (which should be included in the portfolio also)
- proof that you are in your last regular semester before graduation -- acceptable proof is your filled-out Masters planning sheet
- list of professional references (3 minimum)
- a brief statement indicating who each of your references is, and why you have selected these people as references (you will generally not include this statement directly in the portfolio, although you may list your references along with your resume or vita)
|
- goals statement describing specifically the kind of position you expect to hold when you graduate (you may include a goals statement in your portfolio, but this one should be specific and thorough enough to explain to your advisor and to the portfolio committee how the portfolio is going to be used and what it is trying to convey -- this will be a different goals statement than the one you might show a prospective employer or a current employer
- academic vita (which should be included in the portfolio also)
- proof that you are within 1-2 semesters of taking your qualifying exams (for doctoral students) -- acceptable proof is your doctoral program of studies form
- list of professional references (3 minimum)
- a brief statement indicating who each of your references is, and why you have selected these people as references (you will generally not include this statement directly in the portfolio, although you may list your references along with your resume or vita)
|
return to the top of the page
Frequently Asked Questions
How many samples should be included in my portfolio?
Enough, but not too many! The norm is somewhere between 7-9 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 items (people seeking academic jobs often do), or fewer (if you have worked on several large, relevant projects, for example). 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 be 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.
"Artifacts" seems like a strange term -- is that what everyone calls them?
Probably not. The term is descriptive and therefore useful in discussing your portfolio, but it is probably not a term that should appear in the portfolio itself.
All my artifacts seem to be text. Is that ok? How can I avoid having a dull portfolio?
Yes, it's ok providing text is the natural output for most of the activities you expect to be doing professionally. For some people this will be the case and for other it will not. You and your advisor should discuss that. Remember that your portfolio will not look dull to a potential emplyer, or to your current employer, if it demonstrates abilities and accomplishments in line with your goals. If you hope to be a writer for print-based instruction, then your writing samples are going to be the most interesting thing you could show to a prospective employer. Remember also that a well organized presentation of material is attractive in its own right, whether it contains pictures or not.
return to the top of the page