Online Teaching Portfolios

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Welcome to this small page of Tips for Creating a Digital Online Teaching Portfolio. Many of you might be directed here after hearing my presentation given in your class. I hope that this page provides you with some helpful hints and tips. Feel free to leave a comment with suggestions or comments.

This document is divideded into four sections. You can click on the links below to jump to a certain section. Click on the arrows to jump back to the top.

Developing a Framework for your Digital Portolio

This guide is intended to help you collect the appropriate materials for developing your portfolio. While doing coursework or teaching, you will create many materials that can be used in the creation of your digital teaching portfolio.

1. Make a list of what you need.

Many of you may have lists that are put upon you by professors or departments. Make a list of materials you think you should include in the portfolio. Here is a sample list. This list is used by the Linguistics and English Language Department at Brigham Young University.

Lesson Plans
Teaching Philosophy
Video of self teaching
Teacher evaluations
Syllabi
Curriculum Vitae
Sample assessment instruments
Papers
Projects
Action Research

2. Decide on a common style for all of your documents.

Many of the items in the list above are documents. While papers, projects and other reports work well in APA format, lesson plans, syllabi, CVs, and even teaching philosophies may look better in a format other than APA. Making your documents uniform now will help create a common theme when placing your documents into a digital teaching portfolio.

The easiest way to deal with styles is to actually learn to use them in your Word Processor. The following video shows how to use styles in Microsoft Word 2007. The same principle applies to other word processors as well. You can use the built in themes and styles or create your own.

3. Decide on a model for maintaining and publishing documents.

You can always change how you do your portfolio, but deciding on a model now will greatly help you when you begin to publish documents to your digital teaching portfolio.

Model 1: Upload-Download

In this model, you keep a folder or folders of all your documents on a computer or other storage device. When a document is ready, you upload the file. You then create a link to it on your website. Visitors can download the file. The biggest advantage to this model is that your visitors will see the document like you do. Some of the disadvantages include frequent uploading of edited documents and the necesity of your visitors to download the file to view it.

Model 2: Paste-View

This model still involves you keeping your documents on a computer. Instead of uploading the file you open it on your computer, copy the contents, and then paste it to a webpage. One of the best aspects of this approach is that viewers do not have to download any documents to see your work. It still however has the same disadvantage with regard to updating frequently changed files. Also, the way it looks in your word document may not be the same on the web.

Model 3: Upload-Download/Paste-View

This is just a combination of Models 1 and 2. It has the advantages of both, but requires a lot of extra work.

Model 4: Online-Embed

In this model you create and edit your documents with a web word processor such as GoogleDocs. You can then embed the document into any webpage. The main advantage is that you don't have to worry about uploading each iteration of changes. Changes are automatically published to any page that the document is embedded in. Formatting looks the same. The main disadvantage is that there is no downloadable file.

Model 5: Sync-Link

The last model involves keeping your documents on your computer but synchronizing them with some type of online account. DropBox works really well. You install it on your computer, and files can be synced online. On the DropBox website you can choose to share files and get a link. You can then put a link on a webpage. This has the advantage of automatically updating files that are accessible to viewers. The disadvantage is that the file is only downloadable.

Content

One of the main purpose of a Teaching Portfolio is to let possible employers learn about you. You want to help them make the right decision when hiring someone to fill the position. Good content is essential.

Good Content	NOT Good Content
Resume Curriculum Vitae Teaching Philosophy Syllabi Lesson Plans Materials Student Evaluations Evaluations from other teachers or administrators Teaching Video Contact information References	Social Security Number Home address Embarrasing Pictures Addresses and Phone numbers of references Personal life story Complete Autobiography

You may have some questions after looking at the list. Here are some detailed explanations and tips.

Resume & Curriculum Vitae

A resume is usually a 1-2 page summary of your recent relevant work experience and education. I prefer one page. A curriculum vitae is basically a full resume. It should include all of your relevant work experience and education as well as the following:

Education
Experience
Presentations
Publications
Awards & Honors
Memberships
References
Service
Research Interests

TIP: One good rule to follow is to provide both documents in multiple formats. (My current portfolio does not follow this, it will be updated soon). Provide the viewers the ability to view it in a webpage, download it, and print it. This takes a lot of work, so it may need to be a gradual process.

Teaching Philosophy

This is something I have been struggling with lately. I have been revising my current Philosophy statement. Don't let yours get out dated. Review it every semester! One suggestion given to me by colleagues was to provide an abbreviated statement for your viewers to read while providing a link to view or download the whole document. I'm thinking that 300-500 words would be a good length for an abbreviated teaching philosophy statement. So take the huge one you might have written for a course and make it smaller. And as my colleagues suggested, make it represent you!

Syllabi, Lesson Plans, and Other Materials

By including these in your portfolio, you can show employers what you are capable. Use materials you produced as students as well as those you used as a teacher. Make any changes necessary to present these materials in a way that makes you shine.

TIP: I think that you should first focus on including quality materials and then work on quantity. Because you may have (eventually) hundreds of syllabi, don't include multiple syllabi for the same course taught in different terms. Also, providing both a web layout and a digital document can end up in a massive website. Provide a list that the viewer can look at and choose what to download and look at usually works best.

Evaluations

Whether from students, other teachers, or administrators, evaluations are an excellent asset to your portfolio. If posting a note or letter (or even a sentence) from an evaluation, do so in its entirety. For example, if you were to ask someone to write an evaluation of your teaching in a prose format, include the entire evaluation. You don't want viewers to think you have doctored or fabricated the information. If the written evaluation is not good, don't include it. As for the typical questionnaires that most students (and some administrators) complete, be selective in what you include. No one wants to see a huge list of raw data (at least not in this scenario). Give summaries. Include comments. Talk about what the good aspects of your teaching that were mentioned and mention some things that you are working on to improve the quality of your teaching. Also, make sure to keep evaluation results clear. Often times students evaluate both the teacher and the student. Viewers (for the most part) want to know about your teaching, not the course that was developed my the university. (Although this information can be useful.

TIP: Keep the information managable and easy to read. If you provide a document that can be downloaded, use the PDF format. That way, it would take a lot more work for someone malicious to change the information.

Teaching Video

I have only a few words here. 1) Keep it current, 2) Edit and divide it for easy viewing, 3) Provide background information, and 4) Annotate it.

I'm still working on getting a current video.

Contact Information: Yours and Your references'

This is a sticky situation. You really want people to be able to contact you and your references, but you don't want to announce this private personal information to the world. Don't ever list home addresses. For your references, you have a few options. First, you can link to their own websites or the websites of the organizations they represent. For example, at BYU you could provide the name of a professor and link it to his site on the Linguistics Department webpage. This serves two purposes: you give your viewers contact information AND you provide information to your viewers about the quality of the reference you are providing.

For your own personal contact information, you have several options. You can make an image of your email address, use javascript to secure your address, or give a different email address that you can delete if it gets too much spam. See the resources section below for more information

Design

Like I always mention in my presentations on digital portfolios, "Why design and ugly website when someone else can do it for you for free!" What I mean by this is that there are tons of resources that are freely available to help you develop an outstanding online portoflio.

Wordpress

This is a very new discovery for me. Blogs, as a rule, do not make good Content Management Systems (CMS). However, wordpress is so extensible, that you can do some pretty incredible things with it. WordPress allows you to make "pages." You can put any data you want on a page and link to it from the main page. It's easier than it sounds really. Just choose a theme that allows you to use the pages as a menu or other form of navigation. I am currently working on revising my portfolio and have chosen to use WordPress. In fact, this website is actually using WordPress! Although I have my portfolio hosted on my own webspace (which I pay for), WordPress.com let you set up a blog for free. Go there today!

Google Sites

Google Sites has one really big advantage over WordPress: it allows you to create file cabinets. This is a great way to provide your viewers with an easy way to browse and download materials you have produced. Google sites is gaining popularity and is actually designed to be a CMS. It has a lot of functionality, but it is also still a new product. I would trust it with my information, but still keep a backup. (Use should always have a backup of your information. Another plug for WordPress: You can export all your data into an XML document)

iWeb

I really like iWeb, but it does have its limitations. The more pages you get the more cluttered your website will look. The main advantage is that this program is so user friendly that it will actually almost build your portfolio for you. You can copy and paste your information, drag files you want posted & many other things. The drawback is that it is a Mac-only program and that you will need someplace to export the published site to for it to be shared with the world. On the upside, you can export it to a CD or thumbdrive and carry it around with you to show off at job fairs.

Resources

HTML for embedding PDF files

Design and CMS Resources

Other publishing tools (webspace, etc.)

BYU Hosting
Godaddy.com - buy a domain or hosting services
MobileMe

Contact Information Tools

Google Voice - Online Voicemail and "Call Me" buttons.
Email Imaging
- http://safemail.justlikeed.net/
- http://services.nexodyne.com/email/
Javascript

Some Great Links

http://ftad.osu.edu/portfolio/

Examples