10 Create a Personal Tutoring Portfolio

You now have the basis for your portfolio.

Add Rich Meaning and Connections

How do you connect your artifacts and evidence with your tutoring practise, perspective, and philosophy? What themes emerge when you reflect on your path? This is your story and a narrative that will take you beyond the descriptive basics of the evidence. This is the place to write reflective commentary about the evidence that you have chosen. Reflections on this commentary are the grounding for your future vision and summary statements for your portfolio.

Share with Others    

You will start to create a portfolio that only you see. This will give you the benefits of reflective practice and the positive effects on your learners of any mindful acts that arise from contemplation of personal tutoring practices. Over time, the sharing of your tutoring perspectives and philosophy invites feedback and makes for rich and thoughtful conversations with peers. There is a growing body of research on the benefits of Learning Communities where such conversations spark deeper connections and your tutoring portfolio can both inspire and records these interactions.

Electronic Portfolios

There is a wide range of options for telling your particular story. Making your evidence public has become increasingly easy and encouraged through current web based technologies. Web pages, blogs, wikis, and other shared and/or public places are available to anyone with internet connectivity for a wide range of digital story telling options. That said, the old technologies of paper based publishing are certainly still viable and there are many possibilities in between. A portfolio that is the equivalents of a paper version that has been transposed to an electronic medium may be very different from some of the current database systems. There is an ongoing editing of the definition of “portfolio” (Batson, 2002)

Helen Barrett describes some of the variations as follows: “I view portfolios as a process rather than a product – a concrete representation of critical thinking, reflection used to set goals for ongoing professional development. An electronic portfolio developed for this purpose includes technologies that allow the portfolio developer to collect and organize artifacts in many formats (audio, video, graphics, and text). … Often, the terms “electronic portfolio” and “digital portfolio” are used interchangeably. However, I make a distinction: an electronic portfolio contains artifacts that may be in analog (e.g., videotape) or computer-readable form. In a digital portfolio, all artifacts have been transformed into computer-readable form.” (Barrett, 2000)

PebblePad as a Platform to Showcase your Portfolio

PebblePad is a fully featured web application to build your digital portfolio. You can create journals, upload files, embed social media resources from the web and collaborate with other users in groups. It is customizable and flexible, allowing you to collect, reflect on and share your achievements and development online in a space you control. KPU uses the PebblePad software as a platform for digital portfolios. You will have the opportunity for a hands-on session to learn how to use PebblePad to organize your Tutoring Portfolio.

https://app.pebblepad.ca/login/kpu

Summary

“Folio thinking” promotes self-awareness, motivation, and direction and provides invaluable support to individuals in academic, professional, and social settings (UBC 2006). Technology allows us the flexibility to develop our materials to suit our needs. You have control of the focus, direction, and content of your portfolio.

Options for Organizing Your Portfolio Content

Your next step is to use the content compiled and created for our tutor evidence activity (p. 15) to either created a Tutoring Portfolio or integrate the content into one of the following:

• LinkedIn profile
• Statement of intent for further education e.g. graduate studies, teacher education programs
• Multimedia
• Another existing professional portfolio
• Another form approved by your supervisor and Learning Strategist