{"id":20767,"date":"2018-03-12T08:11:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T12:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=20767"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:09:09","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:09:09","slug":"cuportfolio-platform-reflection-showcasing-student-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2018\/cuportfolio-platform-reflection-showcasing-student-work\/","title":{"rendered":"cuPortfolio – A platform for reflection and showcasing student work"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Cook, TLS staff writer<\/em><\/p>\n

In one psychology course at Carleton, cuPortfolio is teaching students the value of reflection, and giving them a platform to showcase their work to future employers.<\/p>\n

Professor Janet Mantler\u2019s course, Transition from University to Career<\/em>, gets students thinking about their overall degree, which she says prepares them for their future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time the course is over, hopefully they think about how their whole degree integrates and it gets them ready to talk about it in job interviews or with other people when they leave university,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Students in Mantler\u2019s class create two portfolios – one contains reflections and course work, while the other is a professional portfolio that can be used to showcase academic experiences to an external audience.<\/p>\n

Mantler says that while there is a template for the professional portfolios, the fifth page is open to students\u2019 creativity and interpretation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can look at that fifth page and get a sense of who they are as a professional, not just as a student,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Three years into using cuPortfolio, Mantler says she\u2019s learned how to make the project successful. She had previously used cuPortfolio in an honours course and says it didn\u2019t work out well because she hadn\u2019t put enough thought into the value the tool would have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen using an ePortfolio, one of the most important things is to think about what the purpose of it is,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

When it came to her Transition<\/em> course, Mantler says she had a very clear pedagogical purpose behind the use of ePortfolios.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of reflection and a lot of integration that [the students] may not even know they were doing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But by the end of the course, Mantler says the students were able to see trends and progression of their work in cuPortfolio. She attributes this to the combination of a well-designed assignment and the nature of the portfolio, displaying all of their work in one place.<\/p>\n

It took a lot of work ahead of time to ensure cuPortfolio was going to be the right tool for her course, Mantler adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t replace good pedagogy, it didn\u2019t replace teaching,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was an assistance to teaching, it went alongside and it was just another tool in my pedagogical tool belt that worked for this assignment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To find out more about Mantler\u2019s experience with cuPortfolio, watch the full interview below. You can also watch interviews with other instructors on the\u00a0cuPortfolio instructor peer support site<\/a>.<\/p>\n