Honor’s ePortfolio
There are a couple of amazing opportunities here in the REAUD Honors College that we have designed just for you, the learner. The first one is that you will develop an ePortfolio that will be used to document your learning experience throughout your undergraduate, and graduate years, in college. This ePortfolio is completely YOURS and what you will put into it will be dictated by YOU. This is a completely free service to you from the many website platforms you can choose from. Examples of platforms are: WordPress, Weebly, Wix, and Google Sites, etc. Your honor’s professors will also encourage you to add to your ePortfolio and we will provide many in-house and outside examples for you to look at, both internationally and locally.
What do I put in an ePortfolio?
You might be asking yourself, What is an ePortfolio?, read this post and find out the amazing opportunity you have as a learner to build out your ePortfolio.
Excerpt from REAUD Honor’s College Handbook:
Official documentation of activities qualifying for Honors experiences should be submitted online in the form of an ePortfolio to the REAUD Honors College Office before the last day of the semester in which the experiences were accrued.
The personal ePortfolio is an opportunity for the student to express his/her creativity and to reflect on his/her activities in the REAUD Honors College and at Lamar University. Students are encouraged to make connections among their extracurricular activities, coursework, and high impact practices. Finally, the construction of the ePortfolio enables students to increase his/her familiarity with digital technology and the practices of responsible digital citizenship.
Honor’s Experiences: What are they and how do I log them electronically?
Eportfolios can and should be simple to understand and, more importantly, simple to create and maintain. Especially if we keep the academic and scholarly jargon down to a minimum and focus on what we need to know to effectively use ePortfolios to enhance learning. I have been using a digital portfolio or an ePortfolio for many years and when I first send people to my portfolio at www.tilisathibodeaux.com those who aren’t aware of the educational jargon ask “isn’t this just a website or blog?” Yes, an ePortfolio is a website, blog or other named digital resources or location where you can show others what you have learned are learning and hope to learn.
You will begin to develop your ePortfolio selecting a platform that you will use throughout the duration of your time as an Honor’s student at Lamar University. Remember, building your eP is an iterative process. We do not expect you have this fully “finished” in the Leadership Community. Instead, we ask that you browse other ePortfolios, read the research in the field around ePortfolios, and decide how to make your ePortfolio reflect aspects of your own personal choice and voice. You get to decide how you set this ePortfolio up and the pages/posts within, the tagging and categories, etc. Be creative and have fun with this. The more you do to maintain and build your ePortfolio the more it will benefit you later along your projected pathway or career. Now, it is time to begin establishing your digital presence in the form of your own website, your ePortfolio. You will do this by posting your Honor’s experiences to your ePortfolio which will be the cornerstone for all of the authentic work that you will do. You will have the opportunity to develop your voice, choose and select your learning tools, develop authentic assignments, and own your learning. Your ePortfolio will be a place for you to house all of your work for others to see, so be mindful of the way you engage and communicate your ideas. Now that you have been accepted into the prestigious Reaud Honor’s College, the program was set up for you to have a variety of diverse experiences. Read the Honor’s College Mission Statement below:
The Reaud Honors College integrates academic excellence, community involvement, and civic leadership.
How We Live Our Mission:
Through regular strategic advisement with our students, we explore, refine, and develop their personal goals and assist them in engaging with realistic opportunities in their academic and professional lives such that they may achieve Reaud Honors College Graduate status and further their educational and professional aspirations beyond Lamar University.
We provide enhanced Honors course offerings in the core curriculum, upper-division degree requirements, and unique interdisciplinary Honors seminars and topics courses.
We support student participation in the high impact educational practices of undergraduate research and creative activity, diversity and global learning, internships and cooperative education, and service learning with personal attention paid to the needs, interests, and aspirations of each individual student.
We encourage and facilitate involvement in the Honors student, University, and local communities through Honors residential life, the Honor Points system and the Honors Student Association.
For this reason, the Honor’s College requires so many honor’s experiences (10-12) that quality you to graduate with Honor’s College status. You will document your Honor’s experiences that you have earned directly in your ePortfolio. This will be used by the department to record your experiences so that you will have a well-rounded, deep, and meaningful learning experience at Lamar. You can link pictures, links to posts, links to external webpages, and any other information you would like to include.
Honor’s Student’s ePortfolio Examples
http://tilisathibodeaux.com/wordpress/?page_id=1352
Selecting an eP Platform
First, select a platform (or find your own) to see which one best appeals to you. Consider storage space, size limitations, video/audio capacity, personalization, etc.
***If you have a website already set up with your district, you should create a new one that is for YOU. District website tend to be limited and blocked by firewalls, etc. Examples of platforms are: WordPress (most popular), Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace.
START WITH FREE! If you get to the point that they are asking you to pay, go back and figure out which step you missed to keep your eP FREE. Do NOT pay anything – these are free! $0 for life.
https://wordpress.com/ – penultimate site, but learning curve
https://www.weebly.com/ – drag and drop – easy
https://www.wix.com/ – with WIX, if you select ADI Tool, it is a helper tool, drag and drop – easy
https://sites.google.com/ – some navigational issues noted, though not too difficult to navigate
Second, once you select a platform, click the ‘Getting Started’ button on the website and the eP platform will walk you through how to set up the link.
Third, when choosing a domain name, type your first name, middle initial, last name or just first and last name. Maybe you have a unique domain name you wish to use. Also, note that when choosing your domain name, you may have to try several options before you can select a free domain name that is available. Personalize this so you do not have a string of numbers behind your website address. www.classylearn.com is just one example of a personalized creative name. Be sure to choose the FREE for life $0 version. If you do not, you will be need to find the link that takes you to the FREE version (In word press, it is just above the paid for options.)
Then, choose a template or theme (same thing). For WordPress, you’ll have to navigate to the word Theme and choose a FREE theme. The other platforms will help you pick out a theme based on what you select as you are signing up. Remember that your eP will grow, just a skeletal shell is all we need at this time.
At this point, you can build an About Me page (post your first discussion here), a Research page (post your week 2 discussion here), and a Leadership page (post your week 3 discussion here). You can also make any top-level pages that you wish. Be sure to copy paste your discussions from this community into your eP as a blog or top-level page.
You may want to develop a top-level (static) page to include Honor’s Experiences. While you can organize your Honor’s Experiences how you wish, this will be a great place to put some of your experiences in the beginning until you figure out how you will organize, structure, and present your eP. Below are some resources that will help you along the way.
Learner’s Mindset Discussions (LMD) ePortfolio Why Ep 30. In this episode we explore how sharing why an ePortfolio is an investment in oneself if much more important than explaining how to build one. If you can share why an ePortfolio is important to you chances are your learner will also appreciate why it can be important to them.
****Helpful Hints about Selecting an eP Platform*****
1. You may want to sign up with an email account other than your LU email so you can keep the same log in beyond your years at LU.
2. Most platforms will start you in a theme, but you can customize and change just about anything.
3. START WITH FREE! If you get to the point that they are asking you to pay, go back and figure out which step you missed to keep your eP FREE. Do NOT pay anything – these are free! $0 for life.
Digital Citizenship: Check out Cyberwise for a listing of resources on appropriate digital citizenship: https://www.cyberwise.org/digital-citizenship-resources
