Student Portfolios in WordPress: Déjà Vu Remix

I’m looking at creating k12 teaching portfolios aligned to Vermont’s teaching standards.

On the plus side, I made a similar portfolio when I did my ITMA program at Virginia Tech.¹ As someone who hired a lot of teachers in VA once upon a time I’ve also looked at hundreds of teacher portfolios. And, finally, over the 7 billion years I’ve been involved in Ed Tech, I have also done many variations of portfolios. Back in VCU-land, I also worked on portfolios with the first-year writing program, the school of nursing, the digital sociology master’s program, and environmental studies.

This time around, I’m trying to decide if I’m being pragmatic or jaded. I’m hoping pragmatic. Here are my initial thoughts and I’ll probably update things as the conversation develops.

The goal here is simplicity. What’s the least friction and the most benefit we can get out of this process/tool? We’ll think this through on both the student authoring side, the course integration side, the outside viewer side, and the portfolio evaluation side. Each of these participants will have different needs/wants and, if I’m good, we’ll find good ways to address these varied needs.

In many ways, I hope to build something similar to what we did with one version of ANTH101. Students and faculty will be able to easily see how the portfolio goals are being met. Choice is in the evidence rather than the site. We’ll remove 99% of the WP dashboard. The WP theme will be pre-assigned. We’ll pre-populate the container content. This is not about digital fluency, multi-modal expression, or anything other than creating an organized and easy to make/navigate a website of proof.

This makes me both happy and sad. Knowing the goal and not having any illusions is good. It’s just sad that the time/space doesn’t really exist for the other things. It is worse to say you want the complexity but not make time for it. The very worst is for me to convince you that you want the complexity when you really don’t.

General concept

The current design is focused on simplicity and clarity. We can brand this up with Middlebury logos, colors, etc. if desired.

If we want to keep things as simple as possible for students, there will be very few options. No Gutenberg at all.

Currently, I see the need for two content types (home page, evidence pages). These pages can be pre-populated for each site so students basically fill out a form for each page.

Front Page

See the Pen
Vermont Teacher Portfolio Home Example by Tom (@twwoodward)
on CodePen.

 

Current elements

• Top menu of VT standards with links to evidence pages.
• Name and program information
• Body
  • Left hand menu of standards and evidence with more detail
  • Main content
    • Image
    • Title
    • Biographical content

Things to consider

• Is having two menus redundant?
• Consider whether the standards should be detailed in the navigation (either location). I could see that being advantageous for people who aren’t familiar with standards but that may not be our audience.
• What, if any, pattern do you want for biographical information?

 

 

See the Pen
VT teacher portfolio – Example Standards Page by Tom (@twwoodward)
on CodePen.

 

Current elements

• Sidebar navigation for the standard with top-level and sub-item descriptions
• Main content
  • Sub-item titles with evidence samples

Things to consider

• Consider the value of full standards descriptions and whether that information is displayed in the side navigation or within the main content views.
• For all evidence, understanding what type of media is going to be submitted and how many items of evidence are allowed will shape the authoring and viewer experience.