What is an ePortfolio?
An ePortfolio is a digital space for you to track your achievements, reflect on your growth during your time at SIUE, and craft a digital identity to share with others. An ePortfolio functions as a personal website, a public-facing record of achievements that can be shared with your instructors, classmates, advisors, community groups, employers, and graduate schools.
In CODES, we will use your ePortfolios in three ways:
- For each course you take, you’ll have a page to store all your major assignments, artifacts, and reflections. The class portfolio page should include a list of five goals drawn from the CODES student learning outcomes. As your class progresses, you will add artifacts to your class portfolio page demonstrating the progress you are making towards those goals. This is a way for your to track your growth in the program and curate your work.
- Over the course of your time at SIUE, you’ll track your growth through your My Journey page. This is a page devoted to telling your story at SIUE through artifacts that demonstrate what you learn, how you change, and who you want to be. Each semester, we will have time set aside in one of your CODES courses to help you add information to your journey page. Your journey page may include assignments from your classes or highlights from your other activities on campus.
- In your senior year, you’ll use your portfolio to reflect on what you’ve learned, look forward to your next steps beyond SIUE, and put together materials like cover letters and resumes.
Setting up your Portfolio: a Step-by-Step Guide
In IRIS, we use WordPress to manage student ePortfolios. Visit our WordPress guide to learn how to login and get started!
- Pick a theme. The theme provides the basic structure and aesthetic of your site, although you can customize it with colors and other design choices. You can preview the themes below, and you’ll receive a form where you can submit your choice.
- Write your “About Me” page; this will live in your navigation bar or on the home page.
- You’ll work with your instructor to develop your learning contract and choose goals for the class portfolio page. As the semester progresses, you’ll add artifacts to your portfolio to demonstrate your learning process and your progress.
- The “Class Portfolio” pages are where you’ll store your major assignments, artifacts, and reflections for each course. Those artifacts will demonstrate your progress toward the goals you identified in your contract for the course. You can find the template for the class portfolio pages here.
- Add content to your “My Journey” page. This is a longer story of your development at SIUE. It includes reflection with artifacts from across all of your educational experiences at SIUE. You’ll add to this page each semester. Visit our “My Journey” guide for more information.
- Add content to your “My Goals” page. This is a page where you discuss your career interests, the courses you have taken, and your steps to degree completion. Visit our “My Goals” guide for more information.