Strategies for Applying the Practice Principle
- Identifying and sharing effective strategies for storing, attaching, and curating artifacts.
- Maintaining an expectation of accessibility, including the ability for an ePortfolio to be accessed across devices and by everyone, including people using assistive technologies.
- Employing universal design principles whenever possible (including color choice, contrast, font size, page hierarchy, captioning, alternatives to drop down menus, etc.).
- Teaching students about visual design considerations, such as font choices, color contrast, image selection and placement, and any other relevant design principles.
- Encouraging students to think about the context of their ePortfolio work, including considering their audience, purpose, and constraints.
- Making sure students understand the many rhetorical choices they are making during the process and how these choices differ from those made during the composition of more traditional documents such as essays, resumes, and cover letters.
- Providing opportunities for students to create a professional digital footprint, including networking in their field of choice and reviewing examples from faculty and industry mentors.
- Considering the constraints and affordances of various ePortfolio genres (learning, archive, assessment, showcase, etc.) in regards to composition, sharing, maintenance, design, etc.
- Determining the availability of tools for ePortfolio making and how student materials are impacted by the constraints of their situation.
- Offering basic training in the use of the ePortfolio platform at the time of implementation, as well as periodically, and upon request through student services.
- Having available on-campus and online staff, including students, who can answer questions around the use of any mandated ePortfolio platform and can also assist with instructional design questions.
- Informing ePortfolio creators of institutional or public resources that can support them in creating their ePortfolio.