Working Portfolio-- The "everything but the kitchen sink" portfolio. This is your collection of EVERYTHING that you have that demonstrates competencies, work experience, learning, achievements, etc. You draw from your working portfolio to create your presentation portfolios (see next vocab word).

Presentation Portfolio--This is a subset of your working portfolio, developed for a specific purpose, such as applying for a job or demonstrating learning for a course. For people who want to share different sides of themselves with different employers, more than one presentation portfolio is a must!

Artifact--The stuff that goes into your portfolio. This includes documents, pictures, videos, audio, digital scans of news stories and credentials, links to online materials you've created, PowerPoint slides, etc.

1.  Identify the purpose of your portfolio

2.  Identify/create/organize your artifacts

3.  Identify the technology tool you will use

4.  Set up a portfolio structure and Table of Contents

5.  Create your portfolio

6.  Market/Share your portfolio

Why are you creating your online portfolio?

Is it to:

• Collect all of your career and learning materials in one location to create a "working portfolio"?

• Highlight your skills, abilities and work experiences to apply for a specific job?

• Showcase your competencies and talents for a potential promotion or for "passive job searching"?

• Apply to college or grad school?

• Demonstrate learning, either for a specific course or for personal/professional development?

 
Identifying your purpose will help you determine:

• The structure and format for your portfolio
  

• The "artifacts" (items for your portfolio) to select

• The tools for creating your portfolio

 
Who is the audience for your portfolio?

• What is their level of comfort with technology?

• What are they expecting to see/find in your portfolio? 

• What kind of "story" do they want you to tell about yourself?

• What do you want to highlight for this audience?

Your artifacts are the items that you will want to put into your portfolio that best represent the story you want to tell your audience about you. Examples of materials to include:

• Resume/Record of Work Experience
• Work samples--this can include documents, presentations, reports, online materials, etc.
• Copies of credentials, such as degrees, certificates, licenses, etc.
• Records of achievements, including certificates, newspaper or magazine stories, etc. 
• Performance evaluations, commendations, etc.
• Recommendations
  
• Transcripts
• Customer feedback
• Class assignments
• Projects

The artifacts you select will depend on the purpose of your portfolio. If you're applying for a specific job, for example, you'll want to include those artifacts that will best sell you to the employer. These would potentially be different from the artifacts you might select to apply to graduate school or to demonstrate learning.

Selecting Your Artifacts

If you're creating your working portfolio, then there's no need to worry about selecting specific artifacts--you'll want to include everything you can find. However if you're creating a presentation portfolio, you will need to be more selective. Only choose those artifacts that will be most appealing and informative to your target audience and that will best represent your work. 

As you select your artifacts think about these questions:

• Why am I creating this portfolio? Who is the target audience and what do they want to see from me? Are there certain artifacts that are expected? If you're using your portfolio to apply for work, for example, it may be a good idea to include your resume. On the other hand, if you're applying to grad school you may want to include scanned copies of your transcripts.
  

• Which artifacts do I have that tell the best story about me? For example, if you want to illustrate specific skills or competencies, then choose those artifacts that do the best job of demonstrating your skills.
  

• Is there a way I can SHOW rather than tell something? Rather than writing in your portfolio that customers love you, can you show this? Do you have a thank-you letter or letter of commendation from your employer that you could include? What about photos or video that you can use to spice up your portfolio narrative?
  

• How far back should I go? Where possible, try to share samples and information from the past few years. Employers are generally most interested in what you've been doing recently, not awhile ago. In some cases you may have to reach further back, but I would suggest not going back any further than 5 years, at least for work samples, evaluations, etc. It makes people wonder what's been happening since then.
  

Some Considerations

• Find the best digital format--It may be a good idea to convert Word documents into PDF files, for example, to ensure that they can't be tampered with. You can find a free online tool for converting your files at www.pdfonline.com.

Scribd is another option. With it, you can upload files to the Scribd site and then embed them in a blog, similar to what you can do with Slideshare (see below).

Some of your materials will probably be in paper form, for example, certificates and degrees. You may want to scan these materials to convert them to a digital format that you can upload to your portfolio. If you don't have a scanner, office services stores like FedEx Kinkos can provide the service.

• Consider using Slideshare for PowerPoint presentations—Slideshare is a free website that allows you to upload to their site and then will give you the computer code you need to embed your presentations directly into your portfolio. This can make a PowerPoint much more visually compelling than simply having a download link.

Slideshare will also let you protect against downloads, so that people would be able to view your slides, but not download them to their computers. 

• Remove any proprietary or other potentially problematic information--Depending on the nature of your work and your previous employment, you may need to remove references to specific clients, proprietary information about your organization, etc. Be sure to take a good look at what you want to include in your portfolio and remove anything that might cause a problem with past employers.

• Don't forget online materials--A lot of your work may already be online. Be sure to include links to sites you've created, online news or magazine articles, etc. 

• Think about storage--Try to find one place for storing all of your digital materials. Some people like to use a flash drive. You can also upload materials to online storage sites such as ThinkFree or MediaFire. Be sure that you have some way of saving links to the materials you already have online so you don't lose track of those.

There are a variety of tools you can use to create an online portfolio. Helen Barrett has a great list here. In the webinar, we focused on three types of tools:

• A blogging platform (Wordpress.com)
• A wiki (Wikispaces)
• A website builder (Google Page Creator)

Below, I’ve included a matrix that you can use to compare different features and find the option that may be best for you. You'll want to consider things like:

• Do you already have an online presence, such as a blog? If so, how do you want to connect your blog and your portfolio?

• Do you want people to be able to interact with your portfolio through comments, etc?

• Do you want your portfolio to be public or private?

• Do you want to be able to use your own name as your URL for your portfolio?

• How do you feel about having ads in your portfolio? Some platforms (such as a blog) allow you to avoid ads, but if you use a wiki, the only way to get rid of ads is to pay a fee.

• Is your portfolio primarily for employment or is it for documenting your own learning?

• What kinds of artifacts do you want to include? Which tool presents those in the best way?

• Which one feels easiest for you to use?

• Which tool gives you the look that you want?

Portfolio Comparison Matrix

Now it's time to organize your portfolio. Every portfolio should have:

• A Welcome Page that explains the purpose of your portfolio and any other information you want your audience to know up front.
  

• Tips on navigating through your portfolio, like what Damien did here or like Alice Mercer's video introduction to her portfolio.
  

• Contact Information--how much you include is up to you. You should include an email address at a minimum, but also consider including your cell phone number, address, and the various places you can be found online, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I would also advise including a photo, although there are obvious pros and cons to doing this for a job search.
  

Additional Sections (depending on the purpose of your portfolio)

• A Biography

• Work Experience/Work History (for work portfolio)

• Educational credentials and background

• Competencies--this is particularly important if your occupation has pre-defined competencies. For example, teaching, medical professions, etc. usually have pre-defined competency frameworks. You can set up your portfolio to demonstrate your proficiency in each of these competency areas.

• Personal Philosophy/Beliefs Statement--Required in some professions, this gives you a chance to explain your approach to your work, your beliefs about your profession, you personal work values, etc.

• Personal Strengths--Are you responsible? Detail-oriented? A visionary thinker? Do you have exceptional team leadership abilities? Consider having a section of your portfolio with artifacts that document your best talents.

• Achievements/Credentials

• Volunteer work
  

• Conference Presentations

• Projects--Examples of projects that you've either led or in which you played a key role. If appropriate, try tying your projects back to your competencies.

• Class Assignments (for school portfolios only)

Review some of the portfolio samples I've included here to get an idea of different ways to structure a portfolio and table of contents.

IMPORTANT!!--As you're setting up your portfolio, make sure that your most important information is only a few clicks away. You don't want to make anyone have to search for your best stuff!

Now it's time to put your portfolio together. How you do that will depend on the tool you select. Below are resources to help you create portfolios using Wordpress, and Google Page Creator.

If you decide to use Wikispaces, after you sign up for your account and name your wiki, you can access their step-by-step instructions. You can also access instructions I created for using Wikispaces here (and check out how Scribd looks at the same time).

Video Tutorial on Using Wordpress.com
This is not specific to creating a portfolio. Instead it walks you through the features and steps of setting up, posting, etc. (Note--you may want to open the tutorial up in one tab and then follow the steps in another tab. You can stop the video when you like to take each step and then go back to the video when you're ready to move on.)

Google Page Creator Tutorial
This is a PDF document that walks you through the process of setting up an online portfolio using Google Page Creator.

Additional Tips

• Write descriptions and provide information to connect the various parts of your portfolio. Make it easy for people to navigate through your work and understand what you're presenting.
  

• Consider recording a brief introduction to your portfolio, like Alice Mercer's. You can use free screencasting software like Jing or FreeScreencast to record and embed 5-minute videos of your desktop that allow you to take people on a quick tour of your portfolio. If you do this, you might also want to include some written instructions (like Damien's) for those people who don't want to watch your video.
  

• Be brief. Consider providing brief snippets or introductions to your work with links to the full project or materials that people can click to if they're interested.

• Make it easy to find. Particularly if you're using your portfolio to job search, it's a good idea to make it likely to be found through popular search engines like Google. Use lots of keywords so that if employers search on them they're more likely to find your portfolio. Make sure you link to related web sites, resources and professional organizations.

• Keep it simple and consistent. Only include those items that will tell your story most clearly. Don't put in work samples, achievements, etc. that aren't clearly linked to your portfolio's purpose.

• Use readable fonts. Online, it's better to use "sans serif" fonts like Verdana, Arial, etc. Also, make sure that you use the same fonts throughout. 

• Check for grammatical and spelling errors. Have someone else go through your portfolio to make sure you didn't miss anything.

• Try to keep file sizes small (under 1MB if possible).

Once you've created your portfolio, you'll want to begin marketing it, especially if you're using it to sell your professional skills or search for a job. Here are some tips and suggestions.

• Buy your name as a domain (i.e., www.michelemartin.com) and map your portfolio to your name. You can do this with Wordpress (for a fee)  and Wikispaces. This way you'll have an easy to remember URL to post on your resume, business cards, etc. Good sites to use to buy and manage domains are Bluehost and GoDaddy.  

Information on domain mapping with Wordpress is here. In Wikispaces, go to "Manage Space" then "Domain Name."

• Put links to your portfolio on your blog and social networking profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning)

• Put the link in your email signature

• Print up personalized business cards that include a link to your portfolio.

• Send it to recruiters.

• Include the link on your resume.

• Use it as a follow-up after interviews.

• Include a link with online applications if the application allows for including a website.

Your goal is to get your portfolio to a wide audience and to make it easy for people to share the link with others.

 Dr. Helen Barrett has experimented with a large number of online tools to create various versions of her online portfolio. Each version also includes instructions on how to use that particular tool to create a portfolio.

 Shannon Turlington has set aside a few pages on her blog for a CV and to communicate about her passions, values, etc. This is an example of how a blogger might get started in using his/her blog for highlighting skills, etc. for a job search.

 Sarah Stewart is a midwife and instructor who is using Wikispaces to construct her own portfolio and model portfolio development for her students. Sarah's profession requires her to have a portfolio, so hers is a good example of how to use a flexible format to meet specific requirements. She's also been reflecting on the process of developing her portfolio, which you can read about here on her blog.

 Sara did a slidecast (audio and powerpoint) to share her philosophy of midwifery.

 Damian Bariexca is using Wikispaces for his portfolio. Notice that he provides written instructions on how to navigate the portfolio. He's also linked his artifacts to the Eleven Domains of School Psychology Practice.

 Christopher Long is using a blogging platform to maintain his portfolio. He's using a paid service called Typepad, but you could easily recreate his portfolio with Wordpress.com.

 Shari Ward has set up her portfolio as a section of her blog. You'll  see that she's included one major work sample in her blog portfolio. She then created a portfolio on Wikispaces where she's added other information and work samples. Visitors to her blog can visit that more complete portfolio by clicking through to the Wikispaces site.

 Aaron Spurr used Google Page Creator to set up his online portfolio.

 Albert Wang also created his portfolio using Googlepages, although it's clearly much more advanced than Aaron's.  Notice how he includes pictures for each of his major design projects, along with an overview of the project and links to other sites and to related documents.  The more visuals you can provide to spice up your text, the more engaging the portfolio will be to viewers.

 This is an example of a portfolio created for school.

 Rebecca has used another wiki platform, Wetpaint, to create her online portfolio. Also take a look at how she's organized her portfolio. The sections she's included may be appropriate for many careers, although you might want to add more visuals and links to work samples.

 Beth Kanter's portfolio is a great example of both a working portfolio as well as how you can embed many types of multimedia and work samples into your online portfolio.

 Five great examples of eportfolios for women in the sciences

 5-minute podcast from an HR recruiter on the importance of an online portfolio. She's also created a sample portfolio using Wetpaint, another free wiki platform.

 Helen Barrett gives an example of how she created her portfolio by tagging items in delicious, an interesting alternative. If most of your work is online, this could be a good way for you to create your working portfolio.

 This article on how to manage your online reputation is a nice complement to thinking through your eportfolio.

 If most of your work is done using MS Office tools, this might be a good way for you to keep all your work samples online in one easy place.

 Another free online file hosting service you could use to keep your working portfolio materials online. This one has unlimited space available and lets you upload files of up to 100 MB.

 Includes instructions on using Delicious to create an online portfolio