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Learning Portfolios* at PSU as Works in Progress

 

During your time here at PSU you may be asked at various times and in various classes to create an online portfolio of your work. Not only is the ePortfolio a great way of organizing work, but it can eventually interface with all of your classes and experiences. Perhaps you can create an ongoing blog or annotated bibliography so that you never lose sight of important highlights of your college career.

 

Freshman Year Experience coordinator J. R. Estes came up with a great metaphor that might help: "The Gallery."

 

It may help you to think of the

ePortfolio as a "gallery" ofworks you are

curating andpresenting to an interested

audience. You decide on what to exhibit

and create contexts for what you

exhibit, in order to help your audience

understand your work.

 

Just as artists often have artist statements that explain their approach, and how they came to that approach, you too will explain your journey and what you have learned. 

 

You can also use your ePortfolio to connect your college course work to important events outside the classroom. For example, how has college helped you to understand pivitol national and international events such as 9/11, the Trayvon Martin case, Ferguson, the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan?

 

This website is meant to give you inspiration and ideas about how to construct and grow your ePortfolio for use now and later. Just as our goal at PSU is to help you become a life long learner, so too the ePortfolio is not meant to be an end product, rather it represents an ever-changing and ongoing journey. 

 

When I think about the ePortfolio, I think about a large colorful quilt or a rich tapestry. I like the tapestry/quilt image as a metaphor for what we are asking you to create. When we ask you to design and maintain an Eportfolio we are asking you to do something very like weaving a tapestry. You are weaving many different ideas and experiences together to form an overall vision of who you are becoming and what you hope to become.

 

There are a million different kinds of quilts. They all have different meanings and carry different intentions.  What they have in common is that the person constructing the quilt is piecing together a whole work from disparate scraps or pieces.  I tend to like colorful, contemporary art quilts. In fact, the background for this website is the image of a quilt by

Melody Johnson titled "A Triumph of Tulips" used by permission of the artist. Here are some other examples of the colorful and whimsical quilts I tend to like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jacqueline de Jonge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiltart Quinceanero: A. Carole Grant

 

 

* An ePortfolio is perhaps better understood as a Learning Portfolio. Whatever different scholars, professors and students may call it we mean the same thing: a collection of a given student's work and his/her reflection on their experience as a student and life long learner. 

 

 

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