Why do students need a CN ePortfolio when they could use LinkedIn®?

Q. Why do students need a CN ePortfolio when they could use LinkedIn®?

A. We get this question a lot! See our answer & reasoning below.

CN ePortfolio is specifically designed for students’ comprehensive academic journey by allowing them to collect, reflect on, and showcase learning artifacts from k-12 to graduate school and beyond, lifelong. Through this, students can personally brand themselves to prepare for the competitive job market upon their graduation. Meanwhile, LinkedIn focuses on a professional profile and career networking and is mostly designed for those who already have or are entering their professional life.

CN ePortfolio benefits that LinkedIn does not provide, include:

·      Authenticity: CN can be integrated with LMS (such as Moodle, Canvas, D2L, Sakai, etc.) and SIS (Student Information Systems) to certify authentic learning evidence and academic status

·      Social learning: CN ePortfolio and LMS offers social learning features through networking students to their peers around the world

·      Competency-based assessment: CN ePortfolio offers a comprehensive toolbox for competency-based curriculum and assessment

·      Global job databases: CN ePortfolio integrates with a growing number of global job databases (Indeed, Internships.com, Higher Ed Jobs) to intelligently suggest career opportunities to all students, even before they are done with school and ready to go to the job market

·      Free and lifelong: Like LinkedIn, CN is free for anyone to sign up and use it lifelong, but the optional premium upgrade for advanced features and services is only $1.50 per month, more affordable to students

·      By educators for educators: CN ePortfolio technology and the CN company are both developed and founded by university and academics without venture capitalist influence

·      Designed specifically for students and academicians: Both the CN mobile and desktop are template-based and easy-to-use for students of all ages and grade levels

Other unique features of CN ePortfolio:

-       Archive old content as students grow academically

-       Create multiple versions of the ePortfolio for different employment applications

-       Dedicated badge system compliant with the highly regarded Open Badges Standard

-       Variety of visibility and access control settings for objects and sections (public, classmates, instructors, employers, and PIN access) to better protect student privacy

-       A variety of admin features, such as rich analytics and branding and customization options provided to licensed institutions

Final Note: If students already have a LinkedIn account – that’s fine. We recommend that they add their CN ePortfolio URL to their LinkedIn profile and vice versa to complement each other.

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