Jumpstart Tip #6: Show "Who You Are!"

Connecting "Who You Are" with "What You Know" and "What You Can Do"

In the final posting of the jumpstart series you'll discover: 3 questions your eFolio should answer 10 considerations with a focus toward relevant evidence 5 specific items an impressive eFolio must include 15 common eFolio mistakes

Who are you? What do you know? What can you do?

As you reveal the answers to three critical questions, be certain to share the core of why you do what you do! Why does it matter to you?  Why should it matter to others?

A list is often only a list

If that list is a resume, it's about two pages in length. It tells the reader about where you have been – where you went to school; degrees, diplomas or certificates you received; and, where you worked in the past.

If your ePortfolio merely replicates that same list, why would anyone take time to look at more of the same? Avoid boring your viewers.

Get Noticed!

Your ePortfolio should expand what the viewer can learn about that person named in your resume! To share a "stand out" ePortfolio, make it more than a resume...maximize meaning through effective evidence connections. Use your content to tell the viewer what you can do and show who you are with more depth and breadth than is possible from a resume.

Ask yourself:
Would I view my eFolio if it was simply a Web-formatted resume with hyperlinks?

Ten considerations:

There are ten specific traits that today's managers and human resource staff are in need of for the workplace. Does your evidence show or confirm the following?

1. Goals or accomplishments you have Achieved
2. Areas where you have Improved
3. People you have Trained/Mentored
4. Projects that you have Managed
5. Processes or products you have Created
6. Ways you have Influenced a person, a team, a place
7. Aspects of your life that have Increased or Decreased (value, stress, profits, loss, impact, learning, time on task, etc.)
8. Your Negotiation skills and experience
9. Initiatives you Launched (individually or as a member of a team)
10. Bringing an event or campaign in Under-Budget

To address the considerations listed above, add content about yourself and what you learned in the process -- your emotions, passion and thoughts. You may not have all ten -- optimize the evidence you have today.

        How you show these as influences toward your future is key to your connected story.

Five items that, when connected, will attract curiosity and attention:

• Your elevator pitch (brief, visionary, clear)
• Examples of your best work (5-10 max! except in rare circumstances such as credentials review; include projects where you learned by doing)
• Testimonials that prove your worth (from advisers, instructors, mentors, clergy, employers and colleagues)
• Visualizations of you in your work environment (photo-quality images or succinct video segments)
• Where you can be found on the Web (if professionally relevant... LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter, Web sites and other examples of your online presence )

In part, you've now returned full circle -- back to "Why are you creating an ePortfolio?" Because you already know that part of the equation, it is now time to connect the dots.

As you use the technology features of myeFolio, you'll include many content items and techniques shown in the word cloud. Showing what you value and who you are through the evidence, narrative and connectedness of your site will give you an edge in remembering what you've learned and representing yourself in your next career move.

Word Cloud created using WordItOut.

Fifteen common eFolio mistakes you'll want to avoid:

1. No name on the site
2. Slogans and quotes that disrupt your intent
3. Poorly prepared or inappropriate photos
4. No posted resume or link to your resume
5. Page links that open but reveal empty space
6. Inconsistent message or focus
7. Ineffective grouping of content on pages
8. Inappropriate content; too much content
9. Lack of detail
10. Site links that target the wrong resource
11. Messy formatting, typos, and poor grammar
12. Missing or outdated contact information
13. Links without contextual narrative or descriptive labeling
14. No evidence of recent activity or updates
15. Privacy settings that require user log-in

Do you know of others you would add to our list? Share them with us in the Comments area.

Next month, myeFolio Spotlight will focus on best practices for sharing your myeFolio sites as we continue to help each of you curate the best possible presentation of "Who You Are!"
 

Jumpstart Tip #5: Let's Get Technical!

The week past, with a new blog post every day, has been intensive...for the author and for you! If you've been under the stress of preparing your eFolio site to meet a pending deadline, we hope the series helped you get on track to meet that goal.

Collecting, Selecting, and Reflecting...you have learned several key ePortfolio preparation tasks.

Are you ready for the last of the four process words in the ePortfolio preparation mantra? Connect ... "joining items together so as to provide access and communication." That becomes the main focus now as you prepare to publish your site online...putting it all together to produce a well-connected eFolio.

It's the part you've been anticipating: To share your site with instructors, peers or prospective employers!

However, before publishing your site online, you'll build your site pages and add those all-important finishing* touches. Connecting content to express your story and share your experiences using the tools in myeFolio can be, as you might expect, somewhat technical. What you need to remember is that "technical" does not equal "difficult" -- and that's because of the way myeFolio simplifies the process of connecting the pieces. 
(* We need to acknowledge that, as a lifelong "living and breathing" representation, an eFolio is never completely finished but you will have moments along the way where aspects of it come to a point of accomplishment. Celebrate those!)

What Happens Next?

Your part, during the connections phase, is to determine how you want your content, pages and site(s) to be displayed. As you try new techniques, keeping it simple is great advice to follow.

• Some eFolio users follow an example where the eFolio seems to connect pages for education, employment, and volunteer activities as a mirror of their resume but in a more detailed format. 
• Others follow a specific template provided by their program of study, often designed to align content with standards and prescribed outcomes. 
• As eFolio users gain expertise, some begin to think ahead by creating and interlinking multiple sites to more efficiently share their learning evidence and experiences with a variety of audiences. 

Regardless of your site plan, there are a few concepts to be unpacked. You will first encounter these as myeFolio terminology but the concepts quickly becomes more of your technical know-how. Nine practical concepts, explained in the following paragraphs, are listed in "need to know" order (not alphabetically).

Site URL

This is the Web address for your eFolio site. A primary site URL will look similar to www.fnamelname.myefolio.com while sites added to the account in the future will retain the base URL extended to include a site shortcut reference. An example of a URL for a different site is www.fnamelname.myefolio.com/profdev, pointing to a separate site used to present on-going professional development (plans, goals, activities, achievements). All site URLs associated with your account are located in the Accounts tab within your owner view.

Owner View

The Owner view is what you see when building your site and making changes to existing content. You should plan to work online from a computer workstation or laptop computer, with access to your local or cloud-based storage and using a Web browser such as Firefox over a reliable Internet connection via your unique myeFolio account login. 

Utilities and myeFolio features allow you to manage everything in this space: create new pages, add additional sites, edit content text or related items, upload files, post or change content using the three-column page layout and properties, apply site designs and configure the status of your site or pages. Any changes you make in the "owner view" will be instantly applied to the appearance of your live site.

Live Site

The myeFolio view that visitors will see online is referred  to as the live site. Your pages, content layout and design choices determine the "live site" or browser view. If your site is public or shared through visitor invitation, the live site view is true to what you see when you examine your work using the "Preview" mode.

Navigation Menu

The names and structured sequence of your pages (and sub-pages) are displayed as navigation menu links. It is controlled by your site design to appear consistently across the top (horizontal) or at the left sidebar (vertical) throughout your eFolio site. It serves as an index and helps people locate the information they want to see. It also informs the structure of the "Navicon" feature when using a mobile-friendly responsive design.

Home Page

The home page is the introductory page of an eFolio Website and is typically the main page a visitor will find when navigating from a search engine. The home page is used to communicate your welcome and overview your site's purpose. It also facilitates navigation to other pages of the site by way of the navigation menu, links, or other elements.

Pages

Individual "pages" hold and present the content of your eFolio site. Each page and its related sub-pages will, at best, group and present categories of content. An example of this might be apparent if you had a page named Education with sub-pages such as Course Work, Service Learning and Studies Abroad. Another example would be a page named Volunteer Experience with sub-pages such as Community Service and Civic Involvement. Content should align consistently with the page labels.

Content

Images, text, hyperlinks, uploaded files, files embedded from other hosting services (i.e., Google Drive, MS OneDrive, YouTube), HTML, QR Codes, Twitter feed or other social media widgets and video files can be added as content for your eFolio site. You control the labels and sequence of your page tree; content is what you place on the pages.

In myeFolio, content is created and defined through field-based forms consistent with items from your educational, employment or personal experiences. Additionally, content formats such as resumes, image panels, image galleries, feedback links and other groupings of content (collections) are provided as presentation formats.

Design

Colors, fonts, banner appearance, top or side navigation options -- all are controlled by your design choice. Design impacts the "look" of your site from page-to-page keeping each element consistent. Selecting a design from our collection provides your site with a comprehensive style so you will not need to set properties for each item or page. If you should decide to apply a different design at a future time, your content continues to look great; it auto-adjusts to the global settings of your updated design choice. (Some organizations work with our designers to develop custom designs for use by their employees or students.)

Responsive Web Design (RWD)

A responsive Website will, by design, resize and display well on any device: desk workstation, laptop, tablet or smartphone. By resizing dynamically, RWD enables eFolio pages to be viewed in response to the screen size of a device. For example, if you use a smartphone to view a responsive Website, the content stacks into a single column, delivering your content in a vertical scrolling layout. Pages are made visible by clicking the Navicon (navigation icon) located at the top.

Device Comparisons
Workstation Display / 1440 px width	Smart Phone / 375 px width

Applying one of the myeFolio responsive design options, your site will display automatically in the size that fits the mobile screen in the viewer's hand. This means that your images and other content will not be compromised by the design or the viewing device.

Can you feel the moment? You're almost there!

In the next and final "Jumpstart post" of this series you'll find several examples that demonstrate how you might connect your content for meaningful presentation of personal, learning, work and community experience. It you're curious or ready for a preview of a few ideas, myeFolio Content Features is a site to visit.

Your Action Checklist:
☐ Collect and prepare remaining content items
☐ Select specific content to be included at this time
☐ Create or upload items to your myeFolio account
☐ Add reflections to significant content
☐ Finalize page tree names and sequence
☐ Explore design choices in myeFolio
☐ Learn technical basics using the myeFolio Primer and Resource Guides

Jumpstart Tip #4: Think about it!

          Reflect ... "to think deeply or carefully about"

Reflection, as a process, helps us discover personal relevance from life experiences and learning. And, that matters much more than checking off a task from an assignment list. Is there a benefit in taking time to reflect? Yes! It helps us embed our experiences into long-term memory.

“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” (...John Dewey)

In recent "jumpstart" posts, we've taken time to expand on what it takes to create an eFolio site as we've shared tips on how to collect (prepare) and select content that aligns with the purpose of your efforts. Most people discover that preparing their eFolio is more beneficial than meeting requirements of a course or applying for employment. The process itself extracts meaning because, at its core, it becomes a representation of who you are through what you have learned, tasks you have accomplished, projects you have completed, insights you have gained and the many ways you have developed as a person.

Reflection, applied to the content you've added to your eFolio site, involves much more than simply describing what you did. Reflection is a conversational thinking activity. When you contemplate what you did, what you learned, and the implication is has for you in the future, your learning goes deeper!

The term "portfolio thinking" is used to describe the process of intentionally relating learning and experience to life, but that does not happen magically. Reflection is not a slam-bang, done forever, one-time activity. The value of reflection is that it is continuous and magnifies experience over time.

Compare your transcript or resume to the pages of your eFolio. Why is the eFolio viewed as a more powerful communication format?

It is more powerful because you are able to share "who you are" across many dimensions with an audience of instructors, peers, future employment contacts, and others. Providing reflection--posted as written text, audio, images or video--you are able to engage people in your story. The format you use is up to you. (By the way, your resume and transcript are also important!)

The myeFolio team values reflection so highly that every major content form includes space designated for your private reflection. Later, if you want to make your thoughts public, content property settings allow you to display those at the item level.

How can you get started?

• Instructors often provide specific "thinking questions" aligned to an assignment or project.
• Diagrams by learning experts (J. Driscoll; G. Gibbs; D. Kolb) visualize the reflective process.
• Sources of sample reflective questions (online or in print) might prove to be helpful.

Perhaps this animated video created by the Skills Team at the University of Hull (England) will express it best. Take time to view it before we continue with the remainder of today's post. Click the VIEW VIDEO link if the player is not visible on your device.

Dr. Helen Barrett, well-respected as a researcher in the area of ePortfolios, talks about reflection as the "heart and soul" of the electronic portfolio. Quoted from her writing: "Ask three simple questions that tie the past with the future: What? So What? and Now What?"

Karen Barnstable, Faculty Advisor and Educational Leader, offers four ways to reflect:

1. Thinking Back -- revisit a prior experience from a fresh and different perspective
2. Thinking Forward -- think about how to do things differently in the future
3. Thinking Inward -- consider your emotions and feelings
4. Thinking Outward -- may lead to new ideas or theories used to explain or make sense of something

If you think about the preparation of your eFolio site as a task to be completed, it merely becomes a product, no more that the destination in a travel plan. However, if you think of it as a process, it will be your discoveries along the way, similar to the places or events you remember from a vacation trip, that have lasting meaning. So it is when you reflect on your learning. It probably won't matter in fifteen years that you received a "C" on your midterm paper, that you applied an incorrect formula to a math problem or that two members on your research team didn't pull their share of the effort. In the practice of reflection, it is significant to share thoughts you had throughout the experience, feelings about how your choices or actions impacted the experience and implications for you in moving forward. 

BOTTOM LINE: As you become more familiar with the practice of reflective thinking, it will fuel your curiosity and guide you to new discoveries about yourself and the world around you. As you take time to reflect, and share your reflections, it makes you more believable! You want this and myeFolio is a great place to share your learning reflections.

TAKE ACTION: Complete this Practical Reflection Activity using myeFolio.

Jumpstart Tip #3: Choose What You'll Use!

Does it Fit? Is it acceptable for your eFolio purpose?

We shared an overarching process word in a previous post...curate! As an action verb, the word means "to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation."

Today's focus is on SELECTING content -- carefully choosing the best or most acceptable items to illustrate your competencies and skills. Not to be confused with showing only your best work, artifacts that clearly demonstrate your learning growth and development are often the most powerful.

If working along with our posts during this week, you've been busy gathering and preparing items you might use in your site. Today we focus on what you will use to present your experience through myeFolio.

It's best when your content aligns with the reason for preparing an ePortfolio. Three prominent ePortfolio models and major characteristics of each are listed for your reference:

The Learning Portfolio (commonly used by students)

• Captures your work in progress for reference
• Includes personal reflection and self-assessment
• Involves thinking and writing about your learning
• Emphasizes the portfolio as a process of learning
• Builds deeper understanding by sharing work with instructors and other learners
• Documents your growth across a semester and bridges to your future self

The Showcase Portfolio (commonly used by graduates and career seekers)

• Represents your exemplary work and skills
• Intentionally displays evidence of experience and achievement
• Emphasizes the portfolio as a product to be shared
• Submitted for end-of-term evaluation
• Provides evidence of capabilities to future employers
• Sometimes described as a multi-dimensional resume

The Assessment Portfolio (commonly used at the program-of-study level)

• Used by instructors and educators
• Provides student work in a learning or showcase portfolio format
• Presents a collection of student work to demonstrate competencies and criteria
• Formatted to align evidence of achievements and reflection with defined standards
• Satisfies program or organizational certification or accreditation outcomes
• Frequently required for professional licensing or certification

The purpose of the model you decide to construct influences your selection of content. This over-simplification may provide a sense of the contrast: 

LEARNING: Content shows mastery of learning within course requirements.
SHOWCASE: Content promotes your personal abilities in a career search.

In each scenario, the same artifact(s) could be selected and be equally appropriate although the context of details shared publicly often varies. In myeFolio, by simply managing item properties to select "what fields are visible," you can post the same artifact to a "learning" site as you would post to a "showcase" site with different results. In other words, you do not have to produce it twice. Content items are re-usable and myeFolio allows you to create multiple sites in the same account.

Example: Assume that you collaborated with your peers on a research project and prepared a final report of your findings. Perhaps the report was recently published in a professional journal. In the context of a learning portfolio, your instructor will want to see your reflections about how you selected your topic, how the team functioned together, what you learned about the research process and more...as well as the final product. You will need to reveal fields with expected details on the site page. In the context of a showcase portfolio, a prospective employer or a selection committee determining graduate school entrance will be more interested in the final product. By including the artifact, you open the door for dialog about the process. It may not be essential to reveal course-relevant details on the site page.

Significant Questions when Selecting Artifacts

• Think about what you learned while completing or working on the artifact?
• Consider how the artifact reflects your strengths, interests, or future career goal?
• In retrospect, would you have done anything differently?
• Thinking about your eFolio site, where will you post the selected content?

Note: Responses to at least three of the questions above might influence your reflective writing for significant artifacts (covered next in our series of jumpstart topics).

Last month's final post introduced the Page Tree and how you might frame out site navigation through it. Those decisions can now help you select your content. The chart below shows some generic page options and suggests content you might post to each. In reverse, if no items currently exist for a page, you might decide to hide the page until you are ready to populate it.

	myeFolio Site Pages
Artifact/Item	Home	Personal Info	Education	Coursework	Employment	Photo Gallery	Web Links
Welcome	x
Courses Taken				x
Credential or Degree			x
Contact Info		x
Website URL							x
YouTube Video	?		?	?	?
Study Abroad Images						x
Resume PDF File		?			?
Written Report				x
Self Biography		x
Part Time Jobs					x

Over time you will SELECT many of your collected items for posting to site pages. There are as many possibilities as there are people using myeFolio!

• Content often exists without supporting evidence and yet, some items when added as "related content" will fill in the details for a greater artifact. 
• Additional items may demonstrate a need to add another page or sub-page to the site (more common as your experience expands over several months).
• Selections that are better shared within a defined context (such as your Resume) may cause you to create a separate site within your account. This provides a unique URL for use within other documents such as a cover letter or online application. 
• Items that expose sensitive personal identity references should be avoided. Remember, your eFolio is available over the Internet! A great example of this would be your college transcript. If you must include it, examine it carefully and be sure to remove student ID numbers, addresses and social security numbers before uploading it to your account.

Reminder: Many existing sites at various stages of development are posted in the Showcase for your reference. These are live sites created by real people who are your peers and could provide ideas about what to do with your site.

Several Content Presentation Ideas are posted at the myeFolio Features site. Check it out!

Take Action: Upload the digital content you have decided to use in your eFolio at this time. Create or acquire additional items in digital format. Technical help is visible in the lower right column "Help panel" as you click from field to field within content forms while working at the ADMIN side of your account. Other helpful guides are posted at myeFolio Resources for your reference.

Jumpstart Tip #2: Prepare Your Stuff!

Practical "Real Time" Help

The focus today continues on the process of COLLECTING content. Finding content implies that you will also prepare it for the Web environment of an eFolio site. It makes sense that your collected items must be in digital format -- ready for the Web -- before posting any content to the pages of your site.

Create, Revise, Save Locally: This part of your preparation best occurs external to myeFolio space. It is easier to work with a file in the original software than to manipulate it after posting to the site.

Organization: When working with files, many users find it helpful to configure a system of topical folders for content in their local storage space before uploading content to myeFolio. Post larger items such as video files in the cloud (Google Drive, iTunes, Microsoft's OneDrive, YouTube, ScreenCast or others) and prepare your links.

Naming Files: Filenames influence URL behaviors and are an important part of your eFolio site. Editing file's name so it describes the content is important but it is equally necessary to make sure that the name allows the file to display correctly in most situations. Guidelines include:

• No special characters -- Use letters a-z, A-Z, numbers 0-9, and, if needed, hyphens (-), underscores (_) or periods (.) are accepted. Other characters could keep files from displaying.
• No spaces -- Spaces often display as an underline confusing viewers. Plus, browsers often require that a filename space be encoded as a plus-sign (+) or %20 -- that's tedious!
• Start with a letter -- This is simply good practice for technical reasons. 
• All lowercase or camelCase -- Your preference needs to become your standard practice as there is no absolute in this. Although computer operating systems are case insensitive, most Web server operating systems are case sensitive. 
• Short filenames -- Strive for a name that is no more than 30 to 50 characters (that's about four or five words in length. 
• Data file formats -- Save your files in PDF or HTM format whenever possible so your content will be viewed as intended regardless of locally installed software.
• Image file formats -- GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs are the formats used to display images on the Web. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. 
• Media file formats -- There are several choices when it comes to video formats: MP4, flv, mov, qt, wmv, or WebM are most common. For both Web and mobile viewing MP4 is preferred. 
• Audio file formats -- Usage indicates that MP3 is the most common sound file format today. 

Exploring Content Types from the myeFolio Perspective

It's tough to separate "finding and gathering content" from "adding it to your account" so, before you read the next post, you might already be thinking about adding "your stuff" to myeFolio.

Let's assume that you decide to begin by writing your Welcome Message, finishing your Resume, choosing some Assignments or Work Samples, grouping your Educational Experience and locating some Photographs to help viewers see you in real life situations!

To do so, there are several content item forms (found in myeFolio by opening the New Content panel) that you could choose from to add the five (5) kinds of content mentioned above to the My Content collection. The following grid suggests the New Content forms you might use to add the artifact listed at the left.

Artifact	General > Basic	Upload > File	Education > Activity	Web Content > Google Drive	Education > Course Taken	Education > Credential/Degree	Upload > Image
Welcome Message	x	x		x
Add Your Resume		x		x
Assignments or Work Samples		x	x	x			x
Educational Experience		x			x	x	x
Relevant Pictures		x					x

The choices above are not exclusive. Many content item types (field-based completion forms) are available in myeFolio. A complete listing with descriptions is available online.

[About Photographs: Be yourself, but only include images that would be "to your advantage" when viewed by a potential employer -- in most scenarios an eFolio site does not benefit from the more casual "social interaction focus" that Facebook users often share although personal images should be included if it adds to your story.]

Posted resource guides will answer many of your questions about how to complete basic myeFolio tasks.

In the next post, you will begin to filter the "greater collection of content" by selecting specific artifacts you'll want to use at this time.

Take Action: Continue looking for content...that which you already have or creating what you need. Digitize and prepare your files for the Web. Organize your files so you can find them when you're ready to upload each as content to myeFolio.

Jumpstart Tip #1: Find Your Stuff!

Licensing a myeFolio Account Does Not a myeFolio Make!

Preparing a strong eFolio site can be summed up with one overarching process word: curate! That word means "to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation." If that's a new word in your vocabulary, no problem! We will unpack the steps over the next several posts as we help you discover the process for finding existing content items (also known as artifacts) or creating content to add to your eFolio site.

Today's focus is on COLLECTING content -- creating or gathering digital items together. Much of your content is available for use already -- you simply need to find it and prepare it for the Web where others will view your eFolio.

Just think! You don't have to be an expert in Web programming to create your eFolio. The team at myeFolio makes it work through various field-based content forms, upload tasks and design options. It is not much different than using some email systems. And, if you have the ability to prepare HTML script or hyperlinks, you can showcase those skills throughout your site.

Good Practices when Collecting Potential Content

1. All the content items (artifacts) you collect should serve the purpose of demonstrating a skill, competency, learning experience or significant aspect of your life.
2. You should collect a wide range of artifacts so you have many options from which to choose.
3. Many artifacts are acquired from your education, training, or work experience; some will come from everyday experiences in your life.
4. Your instructor(s) will provide you with class or program expectations and requirements if completing an eFolio is part of your assessment.
5. When collecting artifacts, include a brief explanation about why you chose it.
6. Add some reflection narrative about the experience associated with the artifact while it is fresh in your mind -- you can expand your comments later.
7. Group your artifacts in a way that makes sense to you.

Your electronic portfolio is unique because your experiences and goals are different from those of another person. The scope of your electronic portfolio is limited only by your imagination.

There are some generally accepted content types that people often include as they begin to work on their site pages. You might consider the following checklist as a starting point:

Completed?	Content Item	Description or Purpose
	Welcome	Summarize who you are; preview some of what can be found in your eFolio site. Give viewers a sense of who you are; help them know what you value.
	Professional goal statement	Write a statement summarizing your goals. To be meaningful, any goals included in your statement should be as specific as possible.
	Assignments or work samples	This information is as diverse as your background. Upload articles, papers, group projects, reports and publications so viewers can see your abilities. Content can include computer graphics, audio, video, hyperlinks, Web content and social media.
	Surveys	Include a survey link to ask your audience for their feedback/opinion of your work.
	Academic awards and honors	Scan and upload certificates of awards, honors and scholarship letters.
	Education	Add degrees, certifications, and licenses as well as significant courses.
	Additional education	List conferences, seminars, workshops and other learning opportunities you have participated in.
	Volunteer and extracurricular activities	List your activities; illustrate them with a photo. Don't forget community service projects, musical performances, sports, drama or campus clubs.
	Internship and work experience	Include details about the employer, place of employment, your position and specific work activities you performed.
	Résumé or curriculum vitae	Summarize your education, achievements, and work experience. Add details such as your skills.
	References	List three to five people who have agreed to talk about your strengths, abilities and experience. Be sure to include full contact information for each one.
	Letters of recommendation and testimonials	Include formal or informal evaluations received from employers, clients, professors, or colleagues; military records; awards and badges.
	Program-specific forms	Program faculty may require the completion of customized forms to collect evidence and learning reflections for assessment purposes.

Note: Work or project samples you choose to include do not have to represent your "best work" or received a top score. It is often better to showcase your learning "over time" by showing what you can do today compared to what you were able to accomplish before. The eFolio setting gives you the opportunity to add context (in a later step) so you can weave the experience of improvement into your presentation.

In the next post, you will learn more about content preparation to make sure items in your COLLECTION will display well on the Web.

Take Action: Start finding what you already have and create what you need.