Electronic Portfolios
What is an ePortfolio?
An electronic portfolio, or ePortfolio, is a personal digital space where you can document, organize, reflect on, and share your learning experiences throughout your time at the University of South Alabama. Your ePortfolio allows you to connect your past and future, your challenges and growth, and your academic experiences to your personal and professional goals.
At South Alabama, ePortfolios are an important part of your educational experience and your preparation for what comes next!
Why should I create an ePortfolio?
You may be asking, "Why do I need an ePortfolio if I already have a resume?" An ePortfolio gives you a place to showcase your accomplishments while making your learning and growth visible to yourself and others. As you look through these resources, be thinking about how the benefits apply to you and what your personal benefit could be.
Below is a list of benefits of ePortfolios from The University of Arizona ePortfolio Initiative - Why use ePortfolios?. Check out their site to get a description and more information about each of these benefits.
- Metacognition - thinking about what and how you learn
- Growth Mindset - recognizing that skills and abilities can develop over time
- Self-Assessment - evaluating your own learning and progress
- Transfer - applying knowledge and skills to new situations
- Digital Literacy - effectively creating, organizing, and sharing digital content
- Digital Identity - intentionally presenting yourself and your accomplishments online
The IUPUI First-Year Experience site also describes some benefits of ePortfolio use. Some of the benefits listed on their site might resonate with you also.
Most importantly, your ePortfolio provides an opportunity to tell the story of your educational journey—not simply what you have done, but what you learned, how you grew, and where you are going next.
At South Alabama, we are committed to preparing students for what comes next after graduation. The LevelUP Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) provides enhanced opportunities for students to develop career readiness competencies that prepare them for life after their degree as confident and capable members of the workforce or well-equipped graduate students.
Your ePortfolio helps make the connection between your academic experiences and your future more visible. The projects, assignments, activities, internships, employment, and other experiences you include can serve as evidence of the knowledge and competencies you are developing.
LinkedIn and an ePortfolio can serve different purposes and work together as part of your professional presence.
LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking platform while your ePortfolio gives you more space to showcase evidence of your work and explain the learning and growth behind it.
Reflection is a particularly important part of the ePortfolio experience. Rather than simply displaying an accomplishment, you can explain what you did, what you learned, what challenges you encountered, and how the experience influenced your future goals.
Your ePortfolio can also include a wider variety of evidence, such as course assignments, research projects, presentations, images, videos, evaluations, testimonials, and professional or co-curricular experiences.
"We don't learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience."
— Attributed to John Dewey
How do I create an ePortfolio?
Click on the items below to get more information, see examples and review tutorials about creating ePortfolios.
South Alabama uses the Canvas Portfolio tool. If Portfolio is enabled for your account, you can create a Showcase Portfolio directly through Canvas.
- Log in to Canvas
- In the Global navigation, click on "Account" under your picture
- Select "Portfolio" from the drop down menu
- Under "Create portfolio", select "Create showcase portfolio" and follow the steps to add one artifact and publish your Canvas Portfolio.
Here's an interactive tutorial
One of the most important parts of an ePortfolio is deciding what to include. Artifacts provide examples of your learning, accomplishments, and skill development.
Possible evidence includes:
- Posters
- Presentations
- Projects
- Research papers
- Course assignments and activities
- Course modules
- Evaluations
- Internships and work experiences
- Community service
- Student organization activities
- Thought leadership, such as blogs or social media
- Testimonials
- Pictures and images
- Videos
- Other examples of your work
Choose evidence that helps tell your story and demonstrates something meaningful about your learning, growth, skills, or goals.
Canvas Showcase Portfolios also allow you to use tags to highlight competencies, skills, and themes connected to your evidence.
Evidence shows what you did, but reflection helps explain what you learned from doing it.
For each Project, you will want to include a narrative/summary of the experience with a reflection. When creating the narrative, think of telling the story of your journey. It should be reflective and professional , relying heavily on the framing of your evidence of learning and growth. Be sure to clarify who, what, where, when, and why in your reflections to give sufficient context to your audiences!
When writing your reflection and discussing your growth as a result of this experience, ask yourself:
- What inspired you?
- What did you learn?
- What challenges did you encounter?
- What were the results?
- How did you grow from the experience?
- What would you change or do differently in the future?
- How might you apply what you learned to a new situation?
Download this printable checklist to guide you as you collect artifacts and write reflections for your electronic portfolio.
Your ePortfolio has a section to identify the skills you gained from each experience. Think about what skills you learned/demonstrated during your experiences - courses, jobs, community service, student organizations, internships, athletics, etc. These could be specific to your major or a course. Along the way, you are also developing broader career skills that prepare you for success in the workplace and lifelong career advancement. Examples of these skills include communication, teamwork, and leadership. They are important because they affect how well you work with others and adapt to new situations.
service, student organizations, athletics, and other experiences.
Examples of discipline-specific skills include:
- Computer programming
- Foreign language
- Data analysis
- Technical writing
- Graphic design
- Research
- Laboratory techniques
- Project management
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) lists these Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce:
- Career & Self-Development
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Teamwork
- Technology
Make it great!
Below are four tips to build a great ePortfolio.
Update - We encourage you to work with your ePortfolio every semester, add coursework, co-curricular experiences, and other content. Sustained engagement will result in a robust ePortfolio when you graduate which can be shared with others
Consistent engagement will help you develop a robust collection of evidence by the time you graduate.
Share your ePortfolio with the audiences who can benefit from seeing your work. Depending on your portfolio and privacy settings, you may be able to share your work with classmates, faculty, advisors, employers, graduate programs, and others.
Canvas Showcase Portfolios can also support external sharing through public links and publishing to LinkedIn, allowing your accomplishments to become part of your broader professional presence.