CREATING AN E-PORTFOLIO

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About E-Portfolios• Historically, e-portfolios were used primarily by artists

to showcase their work.

• E-Portfolios, however, are increasingly being used by all professions.

• They should be supplemental to your application materials.

• An E-Portfolio is different from a LinkedIn profile. Many professionals have both.

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Protect Your Privacy and Identity• Be careful about information you post in your

portfolio because it will be public and open to identity theft.

• The portfolio is intended to supplement your cover letter and resume, so it really only needs an email for contact information.

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About Posting a Resume• I suggest that you do not post a resume

because it is better to always target a specific position or graduate program.

• If you choose to post your resume, however, remove all contact information except an email address from the resume to protect yourself from creeps on the internet and identity thieves.

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• Do not post a cover letter because it makes no sense to do that since a cover letter must be addressed to a specific employer or graduate school.

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Posting Photos of Your Family• It is illegal in the United States for employers to ask if

you are married and/or have children.

• Therefore, many US employers would find it odd if you include photos of your spouse and children.

• If you post photos of your family, be certain your address and phone number are not posted anywhere because you want to protect yourself and your loved ones from creeps on the internet.

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E-Portfolio Design Tips

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Here are some examples of standard portfolio design for a home page. If you use a standard format like this, keep the text to a minimum.

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But, you can also use a non-standard format.

These portfolio home pages create more visual interest.

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These portfolio home pages visually convey the desired career path.

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Writing Bio Information

• Write in the first person,• Keep in short,• Put the bio on the home page or in an

”About Me” page --- avoid doing both.

• Employers are interested in looking at your sample work, so keep the focus on that.

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Using Themes• Decide if you want a vertical layout (one

long page) or horizontal (multiple pages) site.

• In either choice, be certain a viewer can quickly go to your sample work.

• Avoid filler sections or pages. Often themes will push you to write philosophy type statements. Try to avoid that. Reviewers want to see your sample work.

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Populate Your Portfolio• writing you have done in this course (and/or

others)

• work from other courses such as:– Engineering drawings/ 3-D modeling– Photos of you doing bench or field research

accompanied by a final paper or report you did based on this research.

– Videos / Photography/ etc. that show your creativity

• create visual interest when posting your work:– Think about what you click on when viewing web

pages and what you dislike.

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Embed Document Files• I use SlideShare to embed the document

files in this course (schedules and handouts).

• Scribd is another tool that allows you to embed a document file.

• And there are other options out there.

• The goal should be to allow the reader to read the file without having to download it.

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Avoid ugly file links like this.

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If you don’t want to or can’t figure out how to embed document files, create links that are inviting to click on.

Examples of Pages with Visual Interest

Photos and Drawings Slideshows of your work.

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Cris Farnetti has a slide show on his home page.

The slides convey his career interests and also display his course work and activities.

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Here’s how Cris Farnetticreated visual interest for the UT White Paper he wrote for English 317.

His paper is in Scribd, and viewers can scroll to see other pages.

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Notice how Emily DeFord wrote descriptions to help readers understand what they will be viewing.

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To Create Your Portfolio• Choose a free website creator tool:

– Wix– Weebly– Jimdo– and there are others....

• Take the website builder quiz under Tools & Resources to help you decide which website builder will work best for you.

• Try more than one to see which one will be easiest to use.

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