About Portfolio Project Builder
Developed in consultation with several departments and partially funded by UW students through the Student Technology Fee, the Portfolio tool allows participants (students) to collect, annotate, arrange and display a variety of digital "artifacts" that illustrate their accomplishments throughout their University careers. Portfolio Project Builder allows you to guide students through the process of creating and organizing online portfolios.
What is a Portfolio project?
A portfolio is a selection of student work that represents student performance and accomplishments. Portfolios, widely used in the arts to display an artist's work, are now common in many disciplines. A portfolio project can emphasize the participant's (student's) role in constructing understanding, involve participants in the assessment and evaluation of their work, and enhance participant awareness of processes involving writing, problem-solving, researching, or analyzing.
The Catalyst Portfolio and Portfolio Project Builder tools move portfolios to the online environment. Participants collect their work and examples of their interests in digital form throughout a course or their university career, and then reflect on their work, skills, and accomplishments. The Portfolio tool also enables participants to publish a portfolio to the Web with the click of a button. Students access their portfolios on the student side of the Portfolio tool, found at http://portfolio.washington.edu.
The Portfolio Project Builder enables you to guide your participants through the process of creating online portfolios. With the Project Builder, you can provide your participants (students) with a set of Web pages that step them through the process of collecting and reflecting on their work. Each project page is interactive, not only providing questions or instructions to guide participants but also allowing them to work directly in the page. Participants can provide written responses, attach examples of their work or other artifacts, and submit their work to you for review and comments.
You can work with the participant portfolios as you wish, whether you simply return them with comments or make them part of a larger class activity, research project, or advising session.
Many uses for Portfolio Project Builder.
You can use the Portfolio Project Builder to create traditional portfolios. Portfolio Project Builder is also a great way to pose interactive questions to participants as part of an ongoing project. The tool is extremely versatile, allowing participants to upload many kinds of files in response to your questions. Participants may also publish their portfolios online for others to view and leave feedback. Click here for an example of a Reflection Portfolio.
The Portfolio tool is live, which means that as soon as you make changes and distribute your pages to the student's portfolio, students may respond. This immediacy is an important part of the tool's dynamic and flexible nature.
Once you end your Portfolio project (with a particular class, for example),the portfolio is released to your participants for their personal use. Works collected in Portfolio will act as showcases of student development throughout their University career.
Participants can also utilize Portfolio for their own purposes, such as applying to prospective graduate schools, cataloguing their work at the UW, and more. Click here for an example of a Career Portfolio.