E-Portfolios

The CEP E-Portfolio is a personalized web-based collection of work that documents, demonstrates, and contextualizes your collegiate experience in CEP and the UW. As learning tools, portfolios do several important things. First, they serve as extensions of the ISP, allowing you to better plan and track your progress toward your personal learning goals while ensuring that you are meeting the requirements of the major. Second, they are integrative spaces that allow you to draw connections between different elements of your educational experience. Third, they are reflective spaces where you can comment on your own work and see more clearly how you change and develop as you progress through your educational career. Fourth, they are records of your personal educational journey where you can display the skills, knowledge, and ability that you acquire during your time in the CEP program. And lastly, they are a way for your instructors, advisors, and peers to view your work in a holistic format and provide you with feedback.

A portfolio should reflect the unique educational journey of each student, and so what you choose to put in your portfolio is largely up to you. However, there are a few basic things that must be in the portfolio:

The CEP portfolio is not your Facebook page or Instagram. Nor is it your LinkedIn profile. This is, at least during the time you are in CEP, an educational tool to be used by you and those people who are supporting your educational journey (faculty, advisors, mentors, fellow students when appropriate). So, while you might include photos of yourself on the beaches of Rio because this was part of an Exploration Seminar to Brazil where you studied sea turtles, you would not put photos of yourself on spring break in Florida.

Eventually, yes. At the end of your senior year you can create a polished version of your portfolio that would be suitable for showing a prospective employer. But until then, that is not the purpose of this tool. Because it is an educational tool, and not a promotional tool, you should feel free to also include things that did not go so well on your educational journey. Sometimes we learn just as much from failures as we do from successes: documenting and reflecting on these failures can be a very important part of your intellectual and personal development. Later, you can delete them if you want (or simply create a new portfolio for the job market).

All students will begin working on their portfolio in the first quarter of their junior year. Students will then update their portfolios throughout their time in CEP, sometimes on their own, and sometimes in response to specific assignments. During the last quarter of their senior year, students will finalize and polish their portfolios as one of the primary products of CEP 462, the capstone course.

Because portfolios work best when they are used regularly, we strongly recommend that students update their portfolios at least once a quarter. Waiting longer will mean the loss of valuable documents, insight and learning. Portfolios should also be updated before any advising meetings with the CEP Adviser.

You will use any web-based platform of your choosing to create your portfolio. Commonly, students use free platforms such as Wix, Weebly, Google Sites, or WordPress. We will walk you through the process during a class forum, but once you have been taught the basics, it is your responsibility to edit and personalize your portfolio on your own.