Georgia State University
	Middle/Secondary Education and Instructional Technology

“The only permanent truth about work today is that most of it is temporary.”
— From Portfolio Power, Martin Kimeldorf

Introduction

These guidelines provide a general outline or plan for the completion of the master's project.While your adviser is available to provide guidance, it is your responsibility to to interpret these guidelines, set interim deadlines, fill in any self-perceived gaps in your knowledge, and so on. It is your responsibility to work with your adviser to create a plan of action to complete a portfolio which best meets your personal and professional goals as these relate to your current competencies in the area of instructional technology.

Project Goal:

Whereas the comprehensive exam gives you a chance to show your mastery of the theories of Instructional Technology, and the Internship provides a venue for some final practice and synthesis of the skills you have gained in your coursework, the portfolio is your chance to tie everything together in the way that will best aid you in accomplishing your future goals. The purpose of the portfolio requirement is to provide you with a "capstone" experience, one that pulls together much of what you've learned into an integrated whole that demonstrates the abilities you are taking with you into the job market. If you are returning to a job that has already been established for you, the portfolio provides a complete picture of the abilities you are taking with you. The portfolio requirement helps you prepare for professional job-hunting, and provides an opportunity for you to define your professional goals more clearly than you did at the time you entered the program.

The portfolio is NOT supposed to be a record of the work you did in the IT program. DO NOT assemble your portfolio simply to document your course work or project work in the IT program.

The portfolio is also NOT a document produced to a standard specification. It must be unique to you and your professional goals -- one of the primary measures of success for your portfolio is the degree to which it supports your statement of professional goals.

Objectives:

At the end of this project, you will be able to:
· create, present, and maintain a professional portfolio illustrating your skills, knowledge, attitudes and abilities
· summarize and articulate what you know and can do with Instructional Technology
· articulate your professional goals and develop a plan for achieving them.

Resources:

There are several good texts available on creating a professional portfolio. However, no single one is going to be an exact fit for your given situation. It is best to look over several from various professions, and apply what seems to fit your situation and style best.

Additionally, you will need to purchase whatever supplies you decide are necessary to the presentation of your final portfolio. This may include such things as binders, dividers, CD-ROM disks, or whatever else you deem necessary. You may wish to obtain at least two sets of materials since the final portfolio you turn in will not be returned to you but will be retained by the department.

Project Requirements:

You have already completed much of the work required for this project. It consists of the artifacts created by your work throughout the masters program. Your main task in this endeavor is to decide which of those artifacts to include and then to assemble and present your portfolio.

Project Component Value
Portfolio 80 %
Portfolio Presentation 20%

What Should be Included in the Portfolio

I. Artifacts

Artifacts are authentic products or by-products of your activities that serve as indicators of your skills and abilities presented in a manner that is attractive and easy to understand. These activities may have been conducted with a team or alone, inside or outside school. They do not necessarily have to be class projects, IT projects, or anything you have done connected to your degree program -- as long as they are activities that demonstrate skills relevant to your professional goals.

When you are selecting artifacts, remember that they should fulfill several functions:

Provide objective evidence of your skills —Actual samples of your work are the best evidence you can provide of your skills. You may decide to include awards, reviews or endorsements in your portfolio, but these should be used sparingly. Concentrate on using samples of your work to convince a reviewer or potential employer of your skills.

Demonstrate skills appropriate for your professional goals —If you want to work primarily in performance improvement, but your portfolio samples are primarily screen shots from Web sites -- you are probably not demonstrating the skills most appropriate for your professional goals. What can you show instead of screen shots? Just about anything, including:

• executive summaries from various types of reports or studies
• key tables or charts that summarize the data from analysis or evaluation
• project management documents like PERT or GANTT charts
• code samples from programs you have written
• script and/or storyboard samples

Present your work efficiently and effectively. Your portfolio needs to work in at least two situations:

• when people have time to look carefully at each page
• when people do not have time to look carefully at each page

II. Annotation
Annotation is concise, accurate prose presented in a consistent format and serving to explain the significance of an artifact. When your annotation is well done, the viewer of your portfolio gets a complete picture of where this artifact came from, and what it signifies regarding your capabilities. Annotation for each artifact should contain the following categories of information:

Context
· Where and when was the work done?
· Was it a class project? A professional consulting project? A project completed during an internship?

Conditions
· Did you have access to specialists for parts of the project?
· Did you work within a budget? A limited schedule?
· Did you inherit this project from someone else?
· Was the content or the analysis provided at the beginning?
· Were the graphics adapted from elsewhere or created as original material?

Scope
· Was this a prototype? Draft? Proposal? A revision of existing material?
· Did the project go to completion?
· Was it developed further after you worked on it?
· Was the version you worked on the one that was finally delivered?
· Was your analysis used to inform another project?
· How many people used it or are using it now?

Role
· Did you have a designated role on the project?
· What were your major contributions?
· Did you work collaboratively? On which parts?
· Did your role change during the project?

Present the annotation consistently —Annotation should appear in a consistent format throughout the portfolio so that it is easy to find and scan through. Placing the annotation on colored paper (light blue, beige, gray, or some other unobtrusive color) helps distinguish the annotation from the rest of the portfolio's contents, and establish a baseline "look" for the portfolio.

Choosing work for the portfolio —Choose work that is relevant to your professional goals No matter how great a project was, it shouldn't be represented in your portfolio unless it is relevant to your professional goals. There are two dangers inherent in showing work that is not relevant:

• it dilutes the definition you are trying to create for yourself and usually leaves the impression that you "do a little of everything," which is only a positive impression for a very few professional positions
• it tempts people to hire you for the wrong reasons; remember, if you showed it in your portfolio, you are likely to be asked to do it on the job -- think carefully about whether or not you want to be hired as an instructional writer and find yourself cranking out brochure designs as your primary activity!

Choose your best work —It is tempting to put samples in your portfolio to fill gaps that you perceive in your skills or experience, even when that work is not good quality. You are better off leaving such work out of your portfolio and looking for opportunities to do better work as soon as possible. Explaining that you have not had a chance to perfect a skill may reduce your standing as a candidate, but will not leave nearly as bad an impression as that left by a weak item in your portfolio.

III. Supporting materials

In addition to the portfolio itself, you must turn in the following items:

• goals statement describing specifically the kind of position you expect to hold when you graduate and what you want to do with it.
• résumé
• list of courses you have completed for your masters degree. The list should include brief descriptions of those courses you have taken that do not have an IT or ELMT prefix. You should also include courses (or seminars or workshops) you have completed that may not be specifically for your master’s but that you feel are relevant to your career goals.
• list of professional references (3 minimum)
• a brief statement indicating who each of your references is, and why you have selected these people as references

Frequently Asked Questions (From the IT program at Indiana University)

How many samples should be included in my portfolio?
Enough, but not too many! The norm is somewhere between 7-9 annotated samples because this is a number that offers you the chance to show what you can do and not lose the attention of whoever looks through your portfolio. However, you may find that you end up with more items (people seeking academic jobs often do), or fewer (if you have worked on several large, relevant projects, for example). Concentrate on demonstrating your abilities, and then worry about the number of items in your portfolio.

Since I'm demonstrating my own skills, is it ok to include work that I did with a group?
Yes. Your annotation should make it clear which parts of the project you contributed to, and you should credit your teammates either by name or by acknowledging that you worked with a team of 3, team of 5, or whatever.

What if I don't have any kind of original material from a certain project?
Make sure this is really true before you give up looking. If there is absolutely no physical evidence that the project ever took place, investigate whether or not there are artifacts that may reproduced or reprinted. In some cases you can manufacture an artifact, but check with a portfolio advisor first to see what kinds of manufactured artifacts are considered ethical.

Should I reprint all my artifacts so that they look clean and consistent?
Reprint individual items that may have gotten bent or smudged over time. Do not reprint all your artifacts onto a single color of paper or reformat them into a consistent template. When you do that you lose their authentic quality. Put your efforts at consistency into the annotation portions of your portfolio and show your artifacts in their original form.

What about oddly shaped items -- small pamphlets, disks, or oversized print materials?
For many people, this is where your ingenuity will be tested! Some items can be photo-reduced through color copying or plain photocopying so that they fit into your portfolio. For others, you will need to comb the office supply stores to find the right size page protector, bind-in folder or other solution for including non-standard items in your portfolio.

Revised January 2005.