Assembling Your Teaching Portfolio
Guidance on bringing together the various elements of a teaching portfolio
So, you have these fragments of a teaching portfolio, various reflective exercises, letters from peers, etc. Now what?
Reconsider the basics of portfolio format.
Conceptual Organization
Recall that a teaching portfolio may serve many different roles. The ultimate purpose, of course, shapes its organization. Let us assume here that the task is the challenge of assembling a portfolio for others for summative evaluation.
First, what organization to use? Consider that this is one way to convey your creativity and your conception of teaching. There are no rules (at least not yet at UTEP). In this website, we have followed three major categories -- Professional Reflection, Evidence/Feedback, and Professional Development -- and the site map is a scaffolding or prospective table of contents, especially for someone just beginning.
Second, to the degree that portfolios are unique to each individual, you need to make the overall organization explicit to the reader. You might include a table of contents, abstract or one-page summary. Note that this is the opportunity for you to highlight elements that are especially significant to you. Provide the reader with a map (visual or descriptive) and perhaps comment about what you consider the most interesting or relevant sections. Consider that the map is in many ways an outline to the structure of your "argument" about the value or effectiveness of your teaching.
Third, one should consider preparing a "variable length" portfolio that can be read at varying depths. At a fairly "high" level (or near the beginning), one needs to be able to direct the prospective reader in finding what he or she may deem most relevant or interesting. At the same time, you may want to stress your teaching philosophy and what you consider most important.
An important element of portfolios is that they are selective. Be prepared for the reader who may only have the time to invest reading 5 pages. Also, DO NOT include everything. A good reflection on your scholarly approach will be how you can distill important data or evidence and present in a concise form. Bulky data and evidence should be summarized and then relegated to an appendix, or possibly even an archive that does not accompany the portfolio at all. It can be helpful, however, to have a good index, guide or map to this secondary layer of evidence.
Physical Organization
Consider also the physical arrangement of the portfolio. Perhaps you can't judge a book by its cover, but many people do anyway...
What will be the first impression of your prospective reader? Perhaps simply demonstrate that you care about this review of your work, as reflected in the quality of its presentation. One can easily imagine that someone with a flashy presentation and no substance will probably leave a scholarly audience unimpressed. But perhaps the quality of the presentation should at least hope to parallel the quality of its contents.
Consider how the physical organization can parallel the conceptual organization. A ring-binder with tabs, for example, makes it easy to reach various components quickly. Consider also the nature of your evidence. Do you need pockets or a 3-hole binder? Does your evidence best fit in a folder (loose pages) or does it lend itself to binding?