English 3120 Project
Final Project–Online Portfolio

Overview
For this project, you will create an online portfolio (a website) as a marketing tool for your future job search. This online portfolio should be an accurate representation of your professional credentials presented in a very effective manner.

Rationale
Sooner or later, you will face the task of searching for a job. Some of you may already be doing this. With the development of computer technologies, more and more companies are requesting electronic or online resumes and portfolios. The traditional hardcopy approach, though not yet obsolete, is becoming more and more limiting in terms of helping you fulfilling your job prospects.

Therefore, this online portfolio project will

• provide you with a new means of marketing yourself besides the traditional hardcopy cover letter and resume,
• enable you to reach more potential employers,
• allow you to better market yourself, with space for more content and multimedia technologies to make your portfolio more dynamic, and
• provide a chance for you to learn some effective web design skills.

Portfolio vs. Resume
What’s the difference between a portfolio and a resume? In many ways they are similar. They both highlight your impressive qualifications and credentials. They both give people a glimpse of the history of your professional life. They are both, of course, marketing tools to help you find a job. However, they’re also very different in significant ways. While a resume is often an abbreviated picture of your professional self, a portfolio allows you to provide not only a summary of your credentials but also details for those credentials, including descriptions of projects or even the whole projects. While a resume is traditionally limited in length, a portfolio is not, often including an array of different works. When you consider the differences between the hardcopy resume and an online portfolio, the differences are visibly more significant.

Project Components
Professional Profile–This profile will be an analysis of yourself: the professional self, not the everyday self. You will carefully analyze yourself in terms of your credentials, personality, and any other job-related qualifications and qualities.

Portfolio Website–You will carefully design a professional-quality online portfolio with effective content and navigational structures.

Rhetorical Analysis–This will be a critical analysis of the how’s and why’s of your portfolio design. The purpose of the rhetorical analysis is for me to understand your design rationales so that I can grade your assignment more fairly.

What to Include in Your Portfolio
The content of your portfolio website is, technically speaking wide open, that is, you could potentially put anything on your website. However, the rule of thumb is, obviously, that you should only include what adds to your professional credentials. For example, a picture of you having a “really good time” at a keg party may seem pretty cool with your friends but probably will not help with your job search. Sometimes, even what seems neutral information, such as your private or family life, may not be appropriate to be included on your website. In brief, use careful discretion when designing your portfolio content.

Often, between you and me, you may be the better person to make the call what is appropriate content for your portfolio since you probably know a lot better what is important in your field, especially when that field is not English. In case you’re looking for ideas, I have suggested some possible content below:

• A Home/Welcome Page–This will be the very first page of your portfolio, the page people see first when opening your portfolio url. Often, it’s advisable not to put too much information on your first page. Instead, what the first page does is to welcome your visitors. The welcome message often is a good indicator of your personality: warm? cold? professional? indifferent? energetic? lethargic? Be very careful then about how you present yourself. Another thing the first page could do is to provide your visitors with a brief profile of yourself (who you are, what major qualifications you have, what career you’re seeking, etc.). Remember, of course, this is not your resume page, so don’t try to be comprehensive. Be selective and concise. Provide a quick idea who you are so your visitors will have some impression even if they don’t go on to a second page within your portfolio website. A third element that you could have on the first page is navigational orientation if it’s needed for visitors to navigate through your website. A fourth possible element is a picture of yourself and/or a meaningful graphic.
• Resume–A resume is pretty much expected of all online portfolios. In most aspects, this web resume is very similar to your hardcopy resume in content, although the web resume could be relatively more detailed since you don’t have the space limitations on the web. Don’t be overly detailed, however. If you do have a lot of information about a certain aspect, put it on a separate page.
• Professional Profile–This is optional. For those of you who have lengthy resumes, provide a brief professional profile page might be a good idea. The purpose is to give people a quick idea of your professional qualifications. On the other hand, if your resume itself is rather short, there’s probably no need to include a professional profile in your portfolio.
• Writing/Project Samples–This is probably the most important reason why you should have a portfolio, hardcopy, electronic, or online. This is what you usually aren’t able to include in a resume. If, for example, you’re a rhetoric and composition major and are looking for a job in business or technical writing, it’s a good idea to include a number of good writing samples. These samples could include research papers, technical reports or business proposals, websites, online documentation, flyers, brochures, newsletters, etc. If you’re a secondary education major, you could also include some syllabi and course materials you developed for a teaching internship, assignments and instructions you created during a substitute teaching experience, or even a video of your teaching demonstration. If you’re a computer science major, you could include programs and applications you designed; at the same time, don’t forget to include some technical writing samples since a lot of companies may be looking for software engineers who can not only develop applications but also write clear and effective instructions. The writing and project samples should have an introductory page where you list all the samples you’ve included, together with a short one-to-two-paragraph description of what the project is. Once you go to a particular sample, there should be a more detailed description of the project, something close to a rhetorical analysis, about what the background was, whom it was created for, who the readers/users were, what kind of project constraints if any, whether it was a collaborative project, what your specific contribution to the project was if it was a group project, what aspects of design were successful, what lessons you learned, etc. Then following that, of course, is your actual writing/project sample presented in an effective, appropriate format.
• Other Pages–Depending on your major, there are many other pages you could potentially include, as long as they’re relevant and add to your qualifications. For example, you may have some special certificates and certification you may want to describe; you may have got many awards and honors that warrant a separate page of descriptions; or you may just have something special that deserves some extra space. By something special, it doesn’t have to be something that’s nationally or internationally distinguished; something that positively sets you apart from other applicants is enough reason to mention it. Dig deep and hard into your professional background to find all the shining elements.

Format Design
Talking about format design is like opening a can of worms; everybody probably has his/her own idea what format would be appropriate and effective. On the one hand, you’re free to make your own choices and are encouraged to be creative. On the other hand, keep in mind this is a professional portfolio; therefore it should have a professional look. Avoid erring on either the too plain side or the too fancy side; strike a good balance. We will, of course, address design issues (both content and format) throughout the semester.