An assignment for my Visual Rhetoric class had students create an eportfolio. I started one over winter break, but when classes resumed this spring I stopped working on it knowing this assignment was coming up.

Here is the before:

This is the after:

For the most part, I view my portfolio as something that would accompany my resume; I don’t just want the site to reiterate exactly what is stated on the resume. I think focusing on providing samples of my work, from writing to audio, shows the level of quality of which I am capable. I’m sure portions of my resume read similar to anyone else applying for a job in the communications field, and the portfolio serves to show I possess legitimate skill in aspects I mention on my resume, like writing press releases.

I began working on a portfolio over winter break, but it only included writing samples from my position in the university’s communications office. With the redesign, I selected a theme with a featured content slider so I could showcase a few main sections of the site, including a summary of my experience, writing samples and special projects, especially Aisle 2 Bin 36.

I created a menu and used the locations of my internships and a related coursework page as the parent pages. Within each, I created subpages by the type of content I’ve produced, such as press releases, event calendars, and fliers. I thought about using the content types as the main pages, but there would have been ten links in the menu and I thought the more organized option would be to use the locations as the parent pages. I think this works better because the audience can specifically relate the content to the context of the internship site and its mission. I didn’t want everything on one page because I thought it would be unorganized since I have such a variety of content related to each internship and also overwhelming to have so much to scroll through. On each page, I have a sample of my work and a concise explanation of what it is and its purpose. The exception to this is my coursework page. Originally, I had each course listed as a subpage under the parent page of coursework, but thought that led to too much clicking around between pages since I detail 7 different related courses. As an alternative, I placed them together on one page with a brief description and included links to work samples from those courses that align with elements I hope to have present in a communications career.

I used isuu, a separate digital publishing platform, to upload some of my work samples and embed them on the pages. I did this because I didn’t want visitors to have to download pdfs and I thought it was an effective way to view the content, like the guidebook I did for USO-Metro, in the format it’s intended to be read.

On the homepage, I outlined an overview of my experience. On the sidebar, I included a brief About Me textbox and a textbox that includes my internship positions, titles, and dates. I included these so this information is upfront-viewers can instantly get a concise sense of who I am and my experience from the main page. Also on the sidebar, I used a plugin to add video and audio samples from a project I completed. I wanted these on the main page because while I don’t have on the job experience with these, I want my audience to know I do have experience working with these mediums.

There are still several areas of my portfolio I plan to work on over spring break:

-I plan to add a bit more information to my summaries, because I feel like the information I currently have there will be obvious to my employers from my resume or cover letter.

-I also want to work on the header more regarding the placement of my name.

-I’m considering aggregating blog posts written for some of my media courses into this site eventually; I just haven’t had a chance to look into how to do that yet or think about how I would showcase them on the site.

-A few minor details: I need to look into editing CSS to make the “Homepage” or “About” link disappear since I redirected to a “static” page in lieu of having posts appear on the main page. In addition, the featured content area only works with posts, so I also need to edit the theme’s CSS to make the references to commenting, as well as the post dates, disappear.