Why should I create a portfolio showcasing my digital competence?
The digital world we live in encourages us to look at our digital competence and its relation to our pedagogical competence. A critical approach is also crucial; we need to justify our decisions and use digitalization in a meaningful way that empowers both the educator and students.
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is central to being an educator. A digital competence portfolio helps you to document your skills and goals and makes your competence visible and concrete. You can use it when applying for a job or at personal development meetings to showcase what you are doing. In previous steps, we have guided you through analyzing your digital competence. Now it’s time to polish it! Here you can find some suggestions on how to make your portfolio. Also, benchmark what type of portfolios are out there already.
Portfolio Formats
Take a look at some of these example formats for your portfolio (a collage picture as in one of Kelly’s material). The beauty is that you have choice.
- When choosing the format think whether it is adjustable and accessible at any time and easily shared.
- Different options: website, 0365 SWAY -site or OneNote -notebook, video, podcast
Content
- Describe your pedagogical approach to digitalization.
- Tell about your background when it comes to digital competence
- List what you have done in order to develop your digital competence (courses, seminars, webinars, conferences, projects, networks, informal learning)
- List digital tools you use with colleagues and students and briefly explain for what purpose is the tool used.
- Go back to your analysis on DigCompEdu Scale. Which areas do you wish to address in your portfolio at the moment?
- Pinpoint your strengths and areas of improvement and state how you wish to develop your competence.
- Collect examples that showcase your digital competence and how you support students developing their digital competence. Choose a few for the portfolio. You can for example:
- Describe online courses you have taught and other digital approaches in your teaching
- List digital material that you have created
- Include a few selected videos, links, pictures, screenshots, graphical visualisation
- Mention what areas of digital competence would you be willing to share with colleagues and how could the sharing be done. In which areas would you like further training or mentoring?
Develop and keep up to date
- Make it a habit to evaluate your portfolio and keep it updated
- Seek for further training to stay on track: act according to your development plan
Here you can see one template example with similar content suggestions.
By the way, if you need new ideas on how to incorporate themes related to digital competence to your teaching and want to test something new, see the teaching resources. Happy CPD (continuous professional development) in the era of digitalization!
Now move on to STEP 4