Overview

Portfolios, both paper-based and electronic, have been used in Colleges of Education for many reasons: undergraduate students prepare exit portfolios documenting competence in standards; committees review portfolios to select teaching award recipients; promotion and tenure decisions are based on portfolios; and professors submit portfolios for post-tenure reviews (Shulman, 1998). Portfolio creation is “a theoretical act” (Shulman, 1998), requiring authors to choose and reflect on artifacts selected to document development and competency in a given domain. It is, I believe, exceedingly appropriate for me as an aspiring academic in the Instructional Technology field to create an electronic portfolio. Not only does the portfolio serve as a container for my work, but the act of designing the portfolio further demonstrates my ability in the field.

This portfolio is organized around the traditional academic responsibilities of teaching, research, and service.

The Teaching section contains selected artifacts from my work with Masters students and inservice teachers. I have experience in face-to-face instruction, as well as online instruction and have been able to apply what I've learned in coursework to authentic instructional environments. I believe this authentic application is critical to teaching excellence and my own teaching reflects this. I design assignments and in-class activities to focus student attention on real-world use of new skills and learning. The courses, workshops, and inservices I teach usually focus on the integration of technology into the classroom. although I have taught Foundations of Teacher Leadership and Educational Research Methods classes in a fully online program. In my teaching internship at UCF, I taught a face-to-face Masters class on Research Fundamentals in Graduate Education - an unlikely placement for an Instructional Technology student.

The Research portion of this portfolio documents some of my work to date and outlines several ongoing projects. I am abundantly curious and have many questions I would like to explore further. I imagine myself continuing to work with the novice's experience with online learning, human cognition, and teaching methods. In the past two years, I have started to work in the field of Computer Science Education as well.

Finally, the Service portion of the portfolio reveals my interest in improving the academic experience for students of all ages. I have worked to provide a variety of extra-curricular opportunities to UCF's students, but have also worked with inservice teachers to help improve instruction in the K-12 school system. I will seek service opportunities anywhere I believe my efforts will have a positive impact. Those efforts are tightly tied to my interest in teaching.

References

Shulman, L. (1998). Teacher portfolios: A theoretical activity. In N. Lyons (Ed.), With portfolio in hand: Validating the new teacher professionalism (pp. 23-37). New York: Teachers College Press.