7 Eportfolio: Help students integrate learning and get set for life after university

By: Ms. Brenda Melles

Here is the wonder: University students have plenty of paths for learning and building experience. Students are engaged in courses, assignments, classrooms, labs and internships — and also in clubs, teams, residences, volunteer opportunities, part-time jobs and more.

Yet, the university experience offers little opportunity for students to integrate and reflect on their learning and understand what it may mean for their future direction.

This is where a student eportfolio can help.

Eportfolios are both a process to integrate learning and articulate direction, and a product to showcase accomplishments.

Freed from the limits of space and linearity, eportfolios can do things a big black satchel cannot. The contents of eportfolios – “artifacts” and their accompanying “reflections” – can include images, PowerPoint presentations, policy briefs, papers, infographics, sound recordings and more.

The Master of Public Health’s Competency ePortfolio is one such example. Defined as a purposeful collection of electronic evidence that demonstrates learning and achievement in public health over time, the eportfolio transcends the program, but is hosted in one course. We tell students, “imagine that all your life’s experience filled an art gallery; your MPH Competency eportfolio is like a special exhibit.”

Essentially, the eportfolio is a job-seeking tool to integrate learning, articulate professional identity and demonstrate accomplishments to students themselves and to others. Required contents include a professional mission statement, resume, and artifacts and accompanying written reflections curated into three themes.
What have we learned over the past five years of requiring an eportfolio for Master of Public Health students?

1. Have students build it gradually, using a scaffolding strategy to roll out different steps.
2. Provide a structure and a purpose for reflection. Reflective practitioners are energized by applied use. For example, MPH students’ written reflections for their eportfolio function as talking points for a job interview.
3. Let students choose their preferred technology for how to compile and display their eportfolio. Most MPH students use Wix, a free website building platform, but others use Weebly, PowerPoint, LinkedIn, WordPress and more.
4. Be at peace with valuing the process more than the product. This is not an art project (unless a student wants it to be). The imagined audience is a potential employer, but even if students do not display their eportfolio to others, the process is worth it. This former student said it best:

“Personally, throughout the year as I was doing assignment after assignment, I didn’t really think I was developing any new skills. Everything seemed really similar and there was so much going that I didn’t really have time to reflect on what I was doing. However, when I began creating my eportfolio, it forced me to sit and integrate my academic and volunteer experiences into one cohesive presentation. I will definitely draw on these artifacts and these competency categories during job applications and interviews when I’m asked about my skills or examples of when I demonstrated these skills.”