What are e-portfolios?

The e-portfolio will include key reflections and comments, assessment of meeting stated objectives, and will serve as the students’ demonstration of progress through the program.  The e-portfolio will be accessible by program faculty, students, their committees, as well as the PhD Program staff, and in keeping with professional confidentiality norms, each student can grant additional access as needed.  Having all academic and professional materials in one place positions students to be ready for the job market and other professional development opportunities.  Once the e-portfolios are finalized and students are on the job market, then they can be linked to materials that are posted online for graduating students, in the bio section, to make them public.  E-portfolios prior to students entering the job market are only accessible internally.  

Portfolios should be started during the first year in doctoral studies and updated quarterly. The UW Catalyst system enables students to keep sets of documents that can be quickly copied and adapted for various needs throughout the student's career (using the CommonView tool).

What’s in an e-portfolio?

It Varies 

  1. according to intended audience—students, faculty, and potential employers
  2. according to purpose—demonstrating learning, or preparing for the job market
  3. according to owner/developer—personal unique identity and experience

Students follow a program template to create an e-portfolio to track and highlight their progress related to the following areas:

  • Coursework
  • Individual Development Plan (IDP)
  • Practicum experiences (teaching and research)
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Teaching Statement
  • Research Statement
  • Published papers (peer review, book chapters, monographs and reports)
  • Conference presentations/abstracts (peer review)
  • Invitational presentations
  • Qualifying paper
  • Dissertation prospectus
  • Dissertation

See the attached file for an outline of what should be included in most academic portfolios.

Career Portfolios Now

  • portable file of examples relating to the work one can do (skills, strengths, abilities)

Social Work Research and Teaching Portfolios

  • Teaching portfolio should contain copies of any syllabi you've prepared, course materials and evaluations. 
    When working as a teaching assistant with senior faculty, ask them to provide letters of reference for your portfolio evaluating your work in their course.
  • Research portfolio should contain any papers under review/in press/published or other relevant research materials and data.

Building Electronic Portfolios

Portfolios can be constructed and displayed on simple websites. Catalyst CommonView is one very simple way to do this. All students also have the space and resources available to build their own websites through the UWnetID account. There is a special section for creating student web pages.

Click here for further instructions on developing e-portfolios on Canvas and other platforms (Weebly, Wix and Wordpress).

UW Graduate Career Center

The Career Center offers numerous resources to graduate students, including resources in the Academic Careers section that help with portfolios, workshops, and sample documents of all types.

Center for Instructional Development (CIDR)

CIDR has a section on developing teaching portfolios and provides one-on-one consulting.

Catalyst use of Google Sites

Catalyst has an e-Portfolio center through which portfolios can be designed using the Google Sites.