(Unofficial) Portfolio Advice

I’ve been asked quite a bit about the Portfolio option/requirement—what should it look like, is this an OK project, how long should it be, etc.  I’ve avoided providing specific advice, for a couple of reasons:  (a) I’m not the one making all the decisions around here, and (b) I’m hoping to give people a lot of latitude to do whatever makes sense for them and see what kinds of good things emerge.

Based on the first couple of quarters’ experience, though, I thought it might make sense to offer a few words of advice, to both faculty and students, about the process, the product, and related matters.  Please note that this is unofficial advice only and that different faculty might well approach the portfolio assessment process differently.  With that caveat in place, here’s what I think—

Talk to your advisor, early and often.   My first and best piece of advice.  First of all, this is a person who you are (I hope!) talking with about your ambitions, career plans, coursework, etc., and so they are in a good position to help you think about how to make that all visible in the context of the portfolio.  Second of all, and on a more venal note, your advisor is one of the two people who will evaluate your portfolio, so having them on board couldn’t hurt.

Pay attention to context.   The kinds of things you do and experiences you have should make sense within the context of what you want do eventually in your professional life, but also in the contexts of the rest of your academic program, your past and background, and interests, and so on.  So if you have lots of teaching experience (or leadership, or technology development, or whatever) in your past, your portfolio experiences should build on them and show how you have developed those aspects during your time here and in an information context.  Similarly, if you’ve had no leadership, training, etc. background, your experiences might be somewhat smaller in scale, but are nonetheless huge and important to you.  Explain all this in the description and narrative.

Document your experiences well.   Make sure that each of your experiences is adequately documented.  If you make a presentation, get a video or audio recording, along with things like handouts, slides, letters from people who organized the presentation, etc.  If you build a system, save your drafts and designs, user studies, evaluations, and so on. 

If something’s in progress, submit a placeholder.   If you’re working on a project that won’t be completed until after the submission time for the portfolios, you can include it as a work in progress, and update it as you get closer to finishing.

Shoot high. You’ll do this anyway, but I thought I’d throw it in.  In everything you do, in courses as well as in portfolio experiences and out into the rest of your careers, do it really well.  Things usually take care of themselves after that.

 

A few other questions I often get, with strictly personal opinions:

Do I have to address all five bullets equally?   I say no; some people will have natural or intended strengths in particular areas.  Everybody should have something that addresses each of the bullets, but not necessarily at exactly the same level.  None of them should be dismissed, of course.  Your advisor may well feel differently about this, though, so discussion on this point is important.

Do I need five separate experiences for the five bullet points?   Again I say no, but I would hope that people would have a series of experiences which touch on one or more of the requirements, and your narrative would then help to tie them all together and make your interests and experiences coherent for a reader.

How long should the narrative be?   As long as it needs to be, but I wouldn’t go nuts over it.  I’ve suggested to some people that they think of the narrative component as something that connects and brings together the individual experiences.  I’d much rather people spend their time actually doing things than writing about them, but the narrative is an important part of the overall presentation.

Like all free advice, this is worth exactly what you paid for it.  I hope, though, that people find it helpful and constructive.  Feedback on this (from faculty as well as students) is, as always, most welcome.

Joe Janes, Academic Chair

(March 2001)