UNT gives students access to LinkedIn-like e-portfolio
Career Connect E-portfolio Coordinator Adam Wear explains how the new UNT ePortfolio system works. Wear introduces and teaches others to use the system, while also providing technical assistance. Katie Jenkins
LinkedIn and other portfolio sites are as much a part of the pre-graduation anxiety as anything else, but UNT’s new portfolio service will show future employers the skills students learn in the classroom.
UNT bought a five-year contract with the e-portfolio company Foliotek, which will cost the university about $80,000 a year. The account, which can help to beef up a LinkedIn profile, can be accessed through students’ MyUNT page. While the service is just available for undergraduates as of now, graduate students will be added to the system during the summer.
With the e-portfolio, students can input the experiences they have had while in school into the system as projects. Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs Mike Simmons said an e-portfolio project can be any experience where teamwork, communication and critical thinking skills are demonstrated such as a class project or a volunteer experience.
When inputting a project, you can add an email of a professor or supervisor who can verify your experience. If your professor or supervisor verifies your experience it is eligible to become a Career Connect experience. The verification process allows for the assessment of your performance and shows a potential employer looking at your portfolio your own reflection and that you’ve been verified.
The goal of the e-portfolio is to help students create their own online identity and better present their accomplishments that wouldn’t show up on a transcript. A transcript shows what grades you made but an e-portfolio shows what skills you gained from the class and projects you completed.
The Career Connect e-portfolio coordinator Adam Wear said the portfolio gives your potential employer concrete evidence of your college accomplishments.
“Career Connect is actually taking the experiences that you’re already having and moving towards, as the name says, connecting them towards a career in the future,” Wear said.
Students will be able to control what is shown on their e-portfolio but faculty can use it in their classes similar to how Blackboard is used.
Simmons said the e-portfolio is helping the university connect students’ real life experiences and gives students the ability to be represented in more ways than just going to class.
“There are other elements to learning and the portfolio lets us captures that,” Simmons said.
The e-portfolio is free and once you make one, you have access to the system for life, even after you graduate and leave UNT.
How to make an e-portfolio:
- Students can access the e-portfolio on their MyUNT page.
- From there, students can create an account, customize their ID page and start entering in their experiences as projects to be verified by the university.
Tutorial videos are posted on the e-portfolio tab of the Career Connect website or you can call Foliotek’s help line at 888.365.4639.
Featured Image: Career Connect E-portfolio Coordinator Adam Wear explains how the new UNT ePortfolio system works. Wear introduces and teaches others to use the system, while also providing technical assistance. Katie Jenkins
Decent step but I doubt adoption is high at all if students have friction when they have to log into MyUNT page. Also, this does not tackle the existing problem with employers facing a challenge when it comes to sourcing and matching talent to jobs and the skills gap. Again, universities just relying on the students to find the job post and telling employers to look at their ePortfolio (which employers won’t do because they rarely have time to review a cover letter) and paying $80K for a platform primarily for the assessment component (which students don’t care about).
How is this a “LinkedIn-like-eportfolio” when no recruiter can use the platform to recruit talent? This is very misleading.