Why do an e-Portfolio?

An e-Portfolio allows you to:

Introduce Yourself

Your e-portfolio is a way for you to introduce who you are: a holistic sense of what motivates you, what you’ve done, and where you’d like to go. Thinking about your personal and professional goals will help you craft a portfolio that best represents yourself. Employers, graduate/professional schools, and others are looking for good people. Your e-portfolio will communicate who you are as person, learner, and aspiring professional.

Showcase What You Have Learned

The e-portfolio will also showcase the knowledge and skills you have gained as Urban and Regional Planning major. Examples of written and graphical communication will demonstrate your abilities as researcher, analyst, writer, cartographer, plan writer, public presenter, and more. You will also learn more about yourself -- your strengths and areas for future development -- in the process of collecting, selecting, reflecting about, explaining, and presenting work for your portfolio. Because urban planning involves diverse kinds of writings and products, the e-portfolio will demonstrate your ability to apply your knowledge and skills in different writing situations most relevant to your future goals.

Build a Virtual Workbench for Your Ongoing Professional Development

Finally, an e-portfolio can help you showcase your skills for outside audiences. Employers are interested in what you can do, both your technical skillset and broader ability to learn intently, efficiently, and flexibly. The e-portfolio will enable you to demonstrate those skills and the ability to craft polished written and graphical products. Because you ultimately own your e-portfolio, you can later expand or repurpose it to meet your professional or other needs. You might decide, for example, to make the e-portfolio’s scope broader or more narrow, to shift its primary audience (e.g., to clients, friends and family, a civic group), or to further engage readers.

Connecting Across Different Communities

The major purposes we have been describing roughly align with the three spheres of use in the conceptual framework developed by Helen L. Chen and Tracy Penny Light (see the figure above). The diagram below illustrates how your e-portfolio can help you connect your work and learning across academic, professional, and civic or community spheres.