What is an ePortfolio?
Your ePortfolio is your own online space to collect and organise your thoughts, ideas and inspiration, reflections, and exemplars of your work. It is your unique expression of your academic, co-curricular and career experience. You will be asked to use your ePortfolio for specific course-related tasks during your studies at UniSA. You are also encouraged to use your ePortfolio to start building and shaping your professional identity.
In the Engineering profession, it is not unusual for employers to expect you will have a professional online portfolio that documents the projects and solutions you have worked on. Using this space creatively and diligently will set you apart from others and provide an invaluable personal learning resource for you throughout your studies and well into your career.
What does an Engineering portfolio look like?
An Engineering ePortfolio provides you with a platform to creatively showcase your experience and abilities, and express your aspirations and career goals. Your professional portfolio might include:
- the ideas, philosophy and objectives that inform your approach to solving Engineering problems.
- a folio of drawings and models you have developed.
- documentation of projects you have been involved in.
- selected exemplary evidence from coursework, with reflective commentary.
- awards and honors you’ve received.
- career experience and objectives.
- your resume
- your contact information.
Some examples of Engineering ePortfolios
Not sure about all this? Need some inspiration? Have a look at the following professional Engineering portfolios...
Note that some of these examples were produced on different authoring platforms, and are provided as exemplars only to demonstrate the depth and richness of content you may wish to include in your own ePortfolio. You may not necessarily be able to emulate the 'look and feel' of the example portfolios on the UniSA eP system, however, it provides enough flexibility to develop your own functional and personalised ePortfolio if you apply a little creativity.
You may also wish to have a look at ePortfolio profiles and pages created by UniSA staff members Corey Durward, Stuart Dinmore, and Diana Quinn.
ePortfolio FAQs
Who can see the work I add to my ePortfolio?
The guiding principle of the ePortfolio system is that it is your own personal learning space that gives you, the student, complete control over any work you produce in it. By default, any files you add or pages you create (excluding your profile page) cannot be seen by anybody but you, not even your instructors. Should you wish to share your work with friends, your tutor or an employer, there are a range of options for sharing pages at different levels - ePortfolio friends/connections or groups, all UniSA people, specific UniSA staff or students, or public (visible to the world). You can also create a "secret URL" for a page you wish to share and send it to the person you want to share it with.
What can I put in my ePortfolio?
There are many different types of things or 'artefacts' you can add to your ePortfolio. For example, you can:
- upload files such as documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, images (.jpg or .png files), and video and audio files (.mp4 and .mp3 files are best)
- add a range of different styles of written content, such as journals, plans, contact/profile information and resume.
- include works from some other websites, such as YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations, Vocci animated voice narrations, and a range of Google services (e.g. maps, calendar and files in your Google Drive)
How does the UniSA ePortfolio system work?
UniSA uses the Mahara ePortfolio platform. This a common platform used in many schools and universities across Australia. Googling "Mahara" or searching for it on YouTube will give you a wealth of very useful resources. In terms of how you work with Mahara, it is important to remember that there are two distinct areas of the system: "Content" and "Portfolio" - you'll see these in the navigation tabs at the top of each page.
Firstly, "Content" includes all of the things you can include in your eP (files, journals, notes, resume etc.) - you can add these things from the Content tab. Second, "Portfolio" gives you a way to display, organise and share these things by adding them to "pages". Pages are like empty containers that you can drag your content onto, and once you have created a page you can set the sharing options for that page. If you have a series of related pages, you can even organise the pages into a "collection". Pages can have different "layouts", so you can choose a page layout to best suit the content you want to display on it.
How long can I keep my ePortfolio?
You will have full access to your ePortfolio while you are enrolled as a student at UniSA and for the first 12 months after leaving or graduating. Whilst you have access, you can export your ePortfolio as a stand-alone website or into another ePortfolio format such as PebblePad that you can take with you and use again. Look for the "Export" link under the "Portfolio" tab. A couple of free ePortfolio hosting services that you can import your portfolio in to are FolioSpaces and FolioFor.Me.
What should I do to get started?
To get you started with the eP system, we have a few quick and simple activities we recommend you try - these will give you a good feel for how the system works.
Why use an ePortfolio?
There are a number of great reasons to be a regular user of your ePortfolio...
- It's a place to collect and organise your coursework.
- It's a place for creating study groups for discussion and collaborative work.
- You can share examples of your work with advisors, faculty, mentors or potential employers.
- Directly demonstrate the knowledge, skills and attributes gained within and beyond the classroom.
- You'll develop valuable technology skills.
- Use your creativity to represent yourself and your education and make connections between where you are and where you want to go professionally.
- Create a valuable bridging tool for your next job or place of study.
- Collect and showcase evidence of your professional competencies.