Before you begin, organize your pages and upload your files. The pages have been created using standard terminology from promotion and tenure files. You may choose to modify the page names or page elements to meet the needs of your individual career.
To begin, you have two take an honest look at your files. They may be waiting in a drawer or sitting on the shelf but if you’re like most of us, they are still in paper documentation form. The very first up is to create an electronic files, But the good news is it’s not as hard as you might think.
I highly recommend scanning or saving your documents as PDFs rather than any other format. These files are typically small in size and easily opened by almost any device. A second benefit to you is that they are not easily modified, so you have a small layer security.
When you receive electronic documents in image, Word, or other files, always keep a copy for your portfolio by clicking Save As and choosing “pdf” or click to Print the document and tell the printing options to Print or Save as a pdf file. You don’t even need a scanner for this step.
You can find a simple scanner that will hook up to your PC or Mac for less than $100 if you want to work from your home office. Take that stack of certificates you have been saving and scan a few each day, carefully naming them. Before you know it, your evidence will be organized. You can even purchase an app for your smart phone for less than $10 it will snap a picture of the document and converted to a PDF!
Since this portfolio will follow your entire career, we strongly recommend that you create a separate storage folder for each page or even each bullet point. While the files may seem manageable at first, time will make your lists long, and folders will help you to stay organized.
As you scan your items name them by year and activity so you can easily remember what’s in the scan. In the early stages this may seem very simplistic but after you accumulate 50 or so documents in any given folder, you will appreciate the ability to sort by importance. In this case you noticed that I have created A folder for each major area of electronic portfolio. When I expect to have a lot of documents or have several sections, I can create subfolders to help even further with the sorting and classifying.
Think about dates to help you organize. For example, you may attend a given meeting every year. After five years, how will you organize your display or find the right file to attach? If you name your files "Annual meeting 1", "annual meeting 2", etc., you might have to open each file to make sure it's the right one. Consider naming them, "2015, Organization Name Annual Meeting," "2014, Organization Name Annual Meeting," "2013, Organization Name Annual Meeting," This process only takes a few seconds to name and may save you hours looking for specific evidence in future years.
Remember that your portfolio is a part of your intellectual property. While you are generally given a place in your institutions portfolio site to store your documents, you may also choose your own version of cloud storage and link your documents to the portfolio.
If you have never use cloud storage before, you may want to investigate different options but most available sites have enough free storage to easily hold all of your documents. Well it is possible that any electronic file could be hacked, most professors feel very secure using www.skydrive.live.com, a free storage from Microsoft, or free storage available through www.dropbox.com. The Dropbox option is so well accepted that most learning management systems (LMS) have direct links to the Dropbox storage area. A third option is Google Drive, which is a creative/storage option we used to know as Google Docs.
If you do not want to put your files in cloud service storage, then upload them to the electronic portfolio storage area. This this option is not bad, in fact it frequently is the easiest to use. The downside is that all of your electronic documents are now stored in an area owned by the University and your access is dependent upon your employment access. Always be sure to make a backup copy somewhere, even if it’s just cd storage.
