ePortfolio: A Self-Branding Tool for Students
Professor, Entrepreneur
Companies are no longer the only entities that distinguish and differentiate themselves from others by branding. Self-branding, or personal branding, is a form of marketing that an individual uses to create a uniform public image demonstrating his or her values and reputation.
This form of branding is
a common practice among celebrities and politicians as an essential marketing
strategy. But what about college students? Increasingly, they need to self-brand
themselves for today’s competitive career market, given the pervasive role of
social media in a highly volatile and mobile employment environment.
My growing awareness of
this phenomenon, as a by-product of the social uses of technology, led me to research
and develop a platform at the CyberLab of Indiana
University on the IUPUI campus
that addresses the growing need for individual students to manage their own
brand. We have called it the CN
ePortfolio.
Schools have invested
significant resources in helping graduates prepare for employability and their
first job after leaving campus. Still, few have considered the importance—even
necessity—of individual branding as a requirement for life-long employability. Schools
need to help students to think outside of the resume and transcript box.
As students are about
to graduate, advisors and faculty advise them to go to the school career center
for help in creating and tailoring their resumes. However, even a well-written
resume, along with a high GPA noted on an official transcript, is no longer
enough to secure a job in today’s competitive market. Employers want to see
evidence of students’ actual learning and proof of competency in the areas necessary
for their positions, including those qualities that are not so often assessed
by grades such as creativity, ability to work with diverse colleagues, the capacity
to learn from mistakes, even punctuality.
For instance, an A
grade for a graphics course recorded on a transcript does not offer any insight
into the artistic talent of an applicant for a frontend software developer job.
The employers want to
see the students’ work, including authentic design work, class assignments,
badges, even certified recommendations, and endorsements written by classmates,
instructors, and—especially—internship supervisors who know the real
requirements of effective job performance.
An old-fashioned
text-based resume may not be enough to secure employment in any field of work,
not just technology. A personal, professional web page--what we began calling
an ePortfolio decades ago—can be crafted to serve as the primary source of
employment qualifications and as a personal brand. By going beyond a transcript
or letters of recommendation, a personal brand site allows invited viewers to
see a personality and to glimpse a unique presence, validated by actual
evidence of accomplishment.
School administrators
and instructor communities need to catch up to the radically shifting employment
marketplace by understanding the need for ePortfolios and personal branding.
Interim steps being taken on many college campuses to update transcripts with
links and notes that try to capture competency, as well as elective
achievements outside the classroom, are too little, too late.
Instead, educational
institutions from high schools to colleges need to assess the importance and the
benefits of ePortfolios to integrate curricular artifacts and records with the capacity
for self-branding. Schools could thus furnish students with the tools they need
to easily collect their learning evidence and to reflect on them in videos and
other documents, introducing such evidence as they believe best portrays their
achievements and capabilities. Because of technological innovations,
ePortfolios can also embed secure links to official institutional sites,
including transcripts.
The key differentiator
in the ePortfolios—at least the one CN has designed—is making the student the
co-owner and manager of one’s own learning record, now integrated with other
social achievements outside the classroom. Students can build their own brand, drawing
on the official records of not only colleges but also employers, clubs,
external credentialors that award badges or certificates for specific skill
mastery, and so on. Students—continuing throughout their careers—have a means
to fully represent who they are and what they hope to contribute to employers,
to family, and to society.
We, at the IUPUI
CyberLab, with our growing number of global collaborators, have conceptualized
and developed the CN ePortfolio as a cloud-based software-as-a-service product
worldwide with seed funding from Indiana University. In our design thinking and
business modeling, anyone from anywhere should be able to create their lifelong
CN ePortfolio—for free, without personal cost--the same easy way they create
their Gmail or Facebook accounts. Students then own their CN ePortfolio account
for the rest of their lives, without dependence on their college or school.
They can access it when they switch to another school or anytime to store newly
created artifacts for future career use or to modify their personal branding. Once
students are ready to apply for internships, jobs, and volunteer assignments or
just to create a professional profile and presence, they can send the web
address of their CN ePortfolio to select individuals without making their
ePortfolio—and their personal brand--public. See, for example, my student’s ePortfolio and my own.
As a successful serial
entrepreneur and the Founder and architect of CourseNetworking, I have given significant
attention to the development of the CN business modle. I’ve known it is not
easy to sell institutional licenses to schools until we create a substantial value
proposition for it. With this founding principle, we have decided to offer free
multiyear institutional licenses to any academic institution and to provide them
with a free dedicated
gateway page where their students may sign up for their
lifelong CN ePortfolio account. Employers can also visit the schools’ gateway pages to search for
qualified candidates that may fit their open internship or employment positions.
Despite making CN ePortfolios available free to any student, our business model
will be sustained by selling optional paid licenses to schools that would like
to use the CN platform for institutional purposes in a more comprehensive
manner such as integration with their LMS or SIS to automatically create and
maintain ePortfolio accounts for all their students, single sign-on, custom
setting, analytics, etc. Premium services, at an individual rate of $1.50 per
month, will also be available to individual ePortfolio users who wish an
enhanced, premium version that includes additional features, customization and
career services.
The CN concept,
technology, and business model were specifically developed to address both schools’
and individual students’ needs. It is designed by educators and ventured by academics.
As an individual user, you may create a personal branding ePortfolio by
clicking here
without waiting for institutional adoption. As an institutional representative,
you may send
an email to receive a free ePortfolio Gateway for your institution.
As noted, both of these opportunities are offered without charge.
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CyberLab is one of the research centers of Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, IUPUI, Indiana University. CyberLab is the birthplace of a few high-profile educational technology software developments and entrepreneurial projects, including the Oncourse (Sakai), ANGEL Learning, Epslilen, CourseNetwokring (CN) and Rumi. https://cyberlab.iupui.edu/
CourseNetwokring LLC is an educational technology software company seed-funded by Indiana University, and Ali Jafari to develop and globally market CN software services, including CN LMS, CN ePortfolio and CN Social (all are available as SaaS for free and for a fee). https://www.thecn.com/
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