ePortfolio Student Resources

After matriculation, you will move or copy your portfolio from your SMC google account to a personal google account. Rather than linking to artifacts in your SMC Google Drive, you should download from Google Drive and upload to your ePortfolio site.

Getting help with your ePortfolio

Your fellow students are a resource, and you will probably contact them most often. They have commonly answered your question or solved your problem already, and often have good advice based on their experience already in the program.
The Google Sites Help Center
Your professor
The Tech Bar in either the Library or Garaventa

The ePortfolio process

Your academic ePortfolio is a learning process — a way to make meaningful connections to your work throughout the time you are studying, creating assignments and projects as you work through your Master’s degree program. This cycle, or process, can be repeated within each entry as you revise your content, or across the ePortfolio. (This from San Francisco State University’s ePortfolio student process.)

Select

Define how your ePortfolio relates to your goals. How does it connect in class, in your program of study, or bridge to your career?
Decide on your audience. Who will see your ePortfolio? Professors and peers, certainly; what about future internships or employers?
Select content that will convey your purpose to your audience. What key assignments or projects demonstrate your learning?
Work with your instructor(s) in deciding which signature assignments, attachments, images, and media best represent your successes in your program.

Reflect

Make connections between your ePortfolio entries. How are you demonstrating your skills and competencies across your assignments and projects?
Relate your entries to your real world experiences. What is the relevance of your work to larger contexts in your life or the world?
Assess your own learning. What does your ePortfolio show you about what you've gained from your work and achievements?

Publish

Share your work with your audience. Gain valuable feedback from peers and instructors.
Showcase your accomplishments and your professional identity.
Use your ePortfolio to build a valuable network that will help foster your goals.

Tips for building a dynamic entry

Follow these tips to create an entry that will clearly communicate the content of your work or project to your audience.

Add a relevant, engaging photo that represents your assignment or project.
Tag skills or competencies that contributed to your project's success.
Attach your artifacts PDF, documents, presentations, videos etc.
Add a description to your entry that includes relevant information to your topic such as:
A brief summary of the project, paper(s), artifact(s) you're uploading.
Why this topic was chosen/why it is important to you.
Describe how this relates to your studies/goals.
Describe what you learned from assignment, paper or project you are showcasing.

Intellectual property, academic integrity and your ePortfolio

Students retain ownership of their ePortfolio content and in creating ePortfolio content are indicating that the work they are displaying is their own and not deliberately copied or plagiarized from other individuals. Here are some resources and best practices:

Cite your sources whether it be images, links to online content, or articles.
Upload your original work in PDFs to prevent your work from being taken.
Consult the SMC Academic Honor Code or Graduate Academic Honor Code to understand university policies. While the primary audience is undergraduates, the policies and procedures apply to graduate students as well.
See the APA Citation Guide from Purdue OWL

Using images in your ePortfolio

Images can make your ePortfolio more dynamic and appealing to your audience. However, it is important to follow the academic integrity guidelines from above. If you are not using images that you own, it is important to use images responsibly and give proper attribution to the source. Below are some resources to help you use images in your ePortfolio.

Stock images and Creative Commons licensing

There are many ways to find free open source images online to use in your ePortfolio. Some sites have a variety of photos that are free to use or modify, while others may cost money to use. Always be sure to read the website's requirements for copyright and usage before you use the photo. Here are a few sources that many students have found helpful:

Sharing your ePortfolio

See Google’s help site: Publish & Share your site.

While you cannot make individual entries public or private, you can limit viewers to only those in the SMC community, i.e., with an @stmarys-ca.edu email address.