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LIBR 289 (e-Portfolio): E-Portfolio Strategies and Tips

Thanks to all the Fall 2006 LIBR 289 e-Portfolio students who contributed their ideas and suggestions for managing the e-Portfolio process. The following selected strategies and tips are representative of the many contributed, and are posted here with permission from the authors. [Note: the e-Portfolio term "Introduction" or "intros" used here was changed effective Spring 2007 to "Statement of Competency".]

Daria DeCooman —

How to Succeed at the e-Portfolio Without Really Worrying
[Published in the ALASC SLIS Descriptor, January 2007]

Save Everything
Well, within reason. Papers, presentations, contributions to Blackboard discussions: If it pertains to one or more of the 15 competencies, save it. If the artifact is a website, take screenshots and assemble them in a PDF. If you're not the sole owner of the website, don't assume it will still be online when your culminating semester rolls around or that you can recover all or enough of the site via the Wayback Machine. If an instructor returns comments inserted into one of your papers or presentations, save the graded version as well as your final version (in its original program, e.g., Word, versus only in PDF).
Back Everything Up
Don't rely on one mechanism to save your artifacts. Just as when you travel abroad you split your identification and money into two caches (one in a hotel safe, the other on your person), you should similarly take extra effort to make sure that if one of your artifact back-up mechanisms fails you have another. Can't afford a portable hard drive or mass storage device? Get a Gmail account. It's free and comes with lots of room.
Organize Early
The e-Portfolio handbook is publicly available at slisweb.sjsu.edu/289/289spring07.htm. Upcoming e-portfolio-ers are lucky; at best, you can read the handbook before selecting and investing in courses, and at minimum you have some extra advance warning and can get a jumpstart at getting your files in order. Each student naturally will take an individual approach to organizing for the portfolio. Coming into the portfolio experience as a cusp student, among the first class or cohort to assemble portfolios rather than writing papers to graduate, I took a simple approach to getting organized. After setting up a folder for each competency, as well as one for the portfolio introduction/professional philosophy statement and one for the portfolio conclusion, I reviewed my artifacts and parked each into all relevant folders. From there, I adjusted folder contents, wrote an introduction for each folder and worked with my advisor to ensure folder contents met with satisfaction. The main point here is that it's never too early to start organizing in preparation for the portfolio. Moving forward, I imagine students can build portfolios incrementally throughout semesters and arrive at the culminating semester assured of having in hand ample artifacts to present as evidence of proficiency.
Get to Know Plone
Plone tutorials are freely available to one and all at slisweb.sjsu.edu/plone. Why wait until your culminating semester to get to know Plone?
Build Your Portfolio on Schedule
If you want to ensure your 289 advisor reviews all your portfolio contents and provides at least one round of comments before the semester ends, start building your portfolio early and keep up the good work throughout the semester. I set up a calendar with benchmarks (e.g., by this date, I'll have half the portfolio submitted for first review) and deadlines (e.g., on this date, I'll submit these three folders), and building according to schedule worked well for me.
Keep Track of Your Portfolio Progress
A 289 advisor may have up to 10 or more students. Each student may create a folder for each of the 14 competencies and a folder for the portfolio introduction (including the addendum Competency 15), and a folder for the conclusion. I guesstimate the average number of artifacts per folder is two. You can see what portfolio advisors are dealing with. Help yourself and your advisor by keeping track of dates you submit specific folders, whether your request is for first or second review, and whether you've received any reply yet. While advisors are obviously busy people and like all of us need time to get work done, if no response has been forthcoming regarding a certain piece of your portfolio, drop a note to follow up. Even if your email program provides delivery confirmation, an email may still be caught in a spam filter on the other end or may have met with goodness-knows-what "lost in the ether" fate.
Respect Your Advisor's Preferences
Assembling a winning portfolio isn't just about you. The portfolio is our last chance to benefit from the expertise and tutelage proffered by highly trained professionals, the SJSU SLIS faculty. From following carefully your advisor's file-naming conventions, to heeding her or his advice regarding format or substance of folder introductions and contents, working well and cooperatively with your advisor can help you emerge with "Pass" (and thus an MLIS). Working well and cooperatively with your advisor can also help you emerge a portfolio that's stronger than one you could've assembled on your own and that might prove a real, tangible asset as you continue to build your career.
Take Advantage of Peer Support Groups
Whether we're talking about e-Portfolio Blackboard sites or ad-hoc Google or Yahoo groups created by e-Portfolio students from across 289 classes, all these groups provide peer support. Log on often and pay attention to the discussions; learning from peers' misadventures, mistakes, insights, and successes can give you a leg up.
Do Some Research
Now that the first group to culminate via portfolio has wrapped up, several SJSU SLIS portfolios are becoming available on the SLIS website as of January 2007. Looking at portfolios of those who've gone before, as well as getting insights into what makes your advisor tick, could help when it comes time to assemble your portfolio. Throughout the remainder of your SLIS tenure, watch SLIS listserves, pay attention to announcements, and see if you can gain some intelligence that will help you assemble a winning portfolio, one sure to please you and your advisor.
Stay Confident, Be Brave, and Appreciate the Experience
The portfolio will be as good an intellectual product as all others you create during your SLIS tenure. Dedication to excellence throughout the MLIS program allows you to breathe easily at the end, when you get the chance to review your output, select from your best artifacts, and present them in winning combinations to demonstrate your specific proficiencies. Those of us who worry too much all the time should take a chill pill when it comes to the portfolio; confidence in our own abilities should guide us through assembling our goods. But if you have doubts, about any aspect of the portfolio experience, even if you're afraid of seeming stupid or offending advisors, please remember that librarianship is a profession based on respect and fairness and then speak up, ask your questions, and get on with it. In the end, the semester will pass quickly and you'll find yourself equipped with more knowledge about your own abilities, strengths and weaknesses, as well as a tool to help you rev up your career. In fact, and as you might have heard or guessed, you may just find yourself even enjoying the portfolio experience.

Daria DeCooman, Senior Library Communications Manager, Elsevier, San Diego, CA.

Robin Fosdick —

Trying to figure out what some of the competencies were asking for was the hardest part of the whole process for me. Talking to other people was a big help to me. I discussed the competencies with my advisor, coworkers, and other students before starting to put my e-portfolio together.

My best advice for this semester's 289 group is: start early and put yourself on a schedule. I set up a schedule that would give me a two week grace period at the end of the semester in case I ran into problems or had to resubmit any competencies. I also created a checklist so I could see which competencies I'd finished, which ones my advisor was reviewing, and which ones still needed to be done. I finished all my competencies on schedule, but ended up using that "extra" two weeks to reformat the e-portfolio and rewrite my introduction & conclusion.

When you're starting out, the e-portfolio can seem overwhelming and it's hard to know where to get started. My advisor suggested that we find one or two competencies that seemed easy and do those right away. After you've submitted your first competency or two, you'll have a better idea of what work fulfills a competency and what your advisor requires. And don't leave the hard ones (competencies that you're scrambling to find work to fill) until last — do those in the middle of the semester so your advisor can give you suggestions and you have time to resubmit them.

Since there weren't any examples available this fall, I looked at portfolios from other schools to try and get an idea of what the final product should look like. This helped a lot, as I could visualize the finished e-portfolio and what was expected of me. I set up my e-portfolio with links between the pages so it's easy to navigate and I added a resume.

I also read every single question (and response) on the various BlackBoard sites, especially the Plone site. Reading about other people's questions and problems — and seeing the advisor's responses — helped me avoid similar issues and troubleshoot problems.

Sandi Imperio —

My advice to next semester's students would be NOT to look at the competencies as a whole, but as separate entities. The idea of meeting 15 competencies may be daunting to some. However, after I was done, it was much easier than researching and writing two papers. I did have the added benefit of having years of library experience.

Being a visual person, I printed out each competency on a separate piece of paper. I then methodically went through each of my class folders and matched paper to competency(ies) — writing the paper title on the appropriate comp. By the time I got through my last class, I had at least 3 papers per comp.

For my intros, I did not rehash information already contained in the docs, but rather explained why it was included….

I believe the e-portfolio is much more valuable than writing a couple papers on the esoteric topic du jour. The e-port forces the student to truly understand the meaning of the comp in order to prove he/she can apply it to a working situation.

Susan Bougetz —

Helpful to read/hear/discuss in a larger group: I had absolutely no interaction with my fellow e-portfolio people in my group. One other student and myself just emailed each other and gave each other support and tips. Also I joined the GoogleGroups 289 group, which was very valuable. We could communicate with other people in other sections to get a sense of what everyone else was doing. So this is a long way of saying any kind of interaction with a group would be helpful.

Hints/Strategies: SAVE EVERYTHING. I was lucky, I assumed I would be writing two CE papers, and so I saved pretty much everything from all my classes. I would advise people to keep a record of their online discussions somehow (that's the only thing I had no record of—I might have discussed a topic in Blackboard, but if I didn't save it, it's gone forever).

I also listed each class I took and wrote down every assignment I did in it, under it, so I could browse through sometimes if I was feeling strapped. I should have kept a record of what assignments I used for which letter, but didn't think of it until it was too late.

My email pal told me how to do a snapshot of my database, which saved me. Tips on how to do this would be nice to know ahead of time.

Don't forget work experience or internship experience; I did an uncredited internship, and it worked for a lot of the competencies.

Don't wait until the last minute; divide up your time among the 14 competencies and it'll go fast.

My process, which worked pretty well for me:

I wrote down the classes and all assignments in one list. I created a separate page for each competency with the phrase written on the top. I went through by competency and wrote down every assignment I could think of that might apply. I pulled the assignments and sorted them by competency. I then started with "A", and looked at all my stuff, and then wrote the introduction accordingly. I did that for all the letters, and I put in everything and duplicated a lot, because I believe more is more, and my professor apparently didn't mind because I didn't have to rewrite anything. I usually had over five pieces of evidence per competency, figuring she could tell me what to get rid of, but she never did. (Obviously that would depend on the professor). After I had done all the competencies, I wrote the intro and the two essays, since I had all the info fresh in my head.

I hope this helps. I ultimately found it a helpful experience; it was nice to have all my library schoolwork fresh in my head for my job interview.

Gerald Clark —

I spent the largest amount of time writing my introductions, as I felt that by presenting the topic intelligently, I could give greater force to my evidence. I treated each intro as a small paper in and of itself, often with several references. So in essence I felt like I wrote 14 papers before even getting to the papers I wrote and submitted as evidence! Some of the intros were only 3 pages long or so, but sometimes I found I couldn't say everything I needed to in less than 6 or more pages. Writing a strong introduction really makes you feel as though you're putting together a complete package of evidence that demonstrates proficiency in a competency.

I actually think too much emphasis was placed on Plone at the beginning of the class. Yes, it can be made into a fancy web- presentation tool, but most of us just used it as a slightly snazzier version of Blackboard for storing files with some basic text to go along with it. Students should be told to create 16 folders: 1 for the philosophy statement, 14 for each competency, and 1 for the concluding remarks. Those folders should be created early on, in the order above, including keeping the competencies in order. The folders should have short names, like "1—Ethics". I noticed some other student's folders were not in competency order, which I think is a mistake.

Within each competency folder, I put my introduction first, and then Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2, etc. There was pretty much a uniform look to each folder and I could just focus on writing good intros and making sure my evidence was good. Again, just learn enough about Plone to create folders, load your intros and evidence, put text into the summary, and keep everything secured for private access. If you get everything finished you can work on making it aesthetic, but not before then.

The only aspect of Plone that needs to be emphasized is that it takes several hours up front to create your folders, and then at least 2-3 hours per competency to load everything and write short pieces of text in Plone to summarize everything you've submitted, including your introductions. You also need to go back and re-check your work; one small mistake on my part cost me several critical days and a lot of anxiety right at the end of the exercise. I found I under-estimated the time needed to put everything into Plone, which slowed me down a little.

Cecilia Berber —

This is what helped me:

Getting a project buddy. Doing the e-portfolio project is isolating. An acquaintance from school was culminating at the same time I was, and short of starting a study group (which I've done for other classes). She calmed me down when I got hysterical, helped me to interpret the comps, gave me her perspective on some of my papers, and in general provided support for me as I went through the process. I finished a lot sooner than she did, and had more perspective. So in my turn, I was able to give her encouragement, proofread and edit some of her intros, and give her ideas for slanting papers to other competencies.
If your papers are not already organized, take the time at the beginning to organize them. And if they don't have specific titles, rename them with titles that clearly state what they are.
Go through the comps and take notes on papers or other work that you think might apply. This will give you something to work from when you reach that comp, rather than starting from a "blank page."
Try to do something every day, especially if you don't have large blocks of time every day to devote to the project. When I had days like that, I applied the 10-minute rule: work ten minutes at a time if that's all you have. It adds up.
Go through the comps in a systematic fashion. I started at the beginning and worked my way through the alphabet. This prevented the "difficult" ones from being piled up at the end, which in my opinion, would compound the dread and is no good for you psychologically. Also, don't look ahead. Focus only on one comp at a time. This way, you will give it your best work.
Guard against burn out. My way of working, learned from years of writing, was to start in the morning and work throughout the day, just as if it was a 9-5 job. But I made sure to give myself breaks, and I went out every evening to forget about the work and regroup. Also, if you are working this intensively, give yourself a day off now and then.
Do exactly what your advisor tells you, even if you don't agree with her. Don't waste time arguing or trying to prove a point. Fighting is a luxury—and you will lose in more ways than one.
If you don't finish the comps before the deadline, there's no shame in taking an incomplete. Just be sure to continue working through the break, even if you will not be in communication with your advisor.

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