Project 4: Professional Portfolio

Typically, I introduce and design assignments to build on one another as the semester carries on. Obviously,
Im deviating from that plan here, as Im introducing the fourth project before you even know the prompt for
the second or third. This move, however, is intentional and conscious: the reason we are tackling this prompt
now is that this is a project that well return to and discuss at times throughout the rest of the semester. So with
that out of the way, lets get to what youre going to do for this project!

What are We Doing?

Youll be designing a professional portfolio that features work youve done in this course (and others, if you so
desire and have things to show off) to serve as something you can use for when you enter the job market (or
graduate school market, for that matter) after finishing your degree here at FSU.

How are We Doing It?

In short, youll want to:

1. Decide on a web-based platform that will work best for housing your materials.

2. Decide on what materials you want to showcase.

3. Decide how to represent these materials to an audience of future employers (or graduate school
programs).

4. Develop a series of pages on your electronic portfolio site that make sense for how you want to
represent yourself, and who youd want to represent yourself to.

5. Research what your target audience is looking for and find ways to appeal to that.

6. Develop these materials throughout the semester as each assignment and project comes along for this
course and others and decide how they fit into the version of yourself you want to represent to your
target audience.
 7. Complete a final portfolio you submit to me on the due date, and hopefully continue to refine in your
time here at FSU and onto the job market.

So, How Should I Approach This?

The notion of website as professional portfolio is a relatively new practice; as such, the conventions for this
genre are still quite fluid, giving each of you a lot of agency in the construction of your portfolio. At the same
time, there are still conventions for this genre, particularly the genre of portfolio. For instance, a portfolio has
three core components:

Selection: you select consciously a corpus of materials that shape in a particular way your identity as a
potential job, intern, and/or graduate school candidate.

Collection: you make a collection of these materials, archiving them in a way that fosters a specific
reading experience, shows personal progression, and highlights particular writerly and composing
skills.

Reflection: use your Reflection responses to illustrate the conscious and rhetorically informed
reasoning behind the construction of your portfolio; put another way, your responses to the Reflection
should elucidate why this portfolio was constructed this way, what type of meaning can be made, and
what you learned in the process of composing and designing it.

In short, youll need to provide information and materials that make you look like a credible and qualified job,
intern, and/or graduate school candidate. This will require you to research different job/intern positions or
graduate school programs; youll also need to explore further the notion of the professional portfolio (which we
will do together in class), while simultaneously projecting yourself into the future of the job market where you
may be applying for a job or internship that doesnt quite exist yet.

What you include in your portfolio and how you design and organize it is up to you. However, you need to be
cognizant of the rhetorical situation, particularly your audience. As with the other major projects, youre
completing a Reflection where youll articulate and defend your composing, designing, and editing decisions
for this project. I place a heavy emphasis on your ability to justify your rhetorical strategies; that is, when I
assess your portfolio, Im looking at your rationale to see if you are able to demonstrate how your composing
and designing practices are rhetorical and conscious rather than whimsical.

Why are We Doing This?

One of the notable requirements for your major projects in this course is that your work has traction in the real
world; otherwise said, I want you to engage in and compose texts that are grounded in real world rhetorical
situations. This means that your texts have real audiences (not just me as your teacher) and that your texts
circulate within the real world. This mindset is vital as you begin to conceive of, approach, and eventually
compose the fourth project: the digital professional portfolio. Your portfolio, which will be your own
professional website, should include materials that would appeal to future employers (e.g., rsum/CV, future
goals, specific skill sets, etc.) as well as materials that reflect the strengths and skills youve developed as a
writer/composer at FSU (e.g., examples of work produced across different or within specific genres). The goal
here is for you to leave this course with a professional portfolio that you can then maintain and potentially use
when applying for future jobs, internships, and/or graduate schools.

In designing and asking you to complete this project, I want you to have done, and be able to do the following:
Research the qualifications and expectations of your desired job, internship, or graduate school.
 Understand the conventions of the digital professional portfolio.

Develop and gather various professional documents and materials.

Create and design a website (i.e., a portfolio) to house professional documents and materials and to
market yourself professionally.

Arrange and contextualize your professional documents and materials in a way that is appropriate and
effective considering your audience.

Design your portfolio in a way that is easy for your users to navigate.

Construct and exude a professional identity.

When is it Due?
This project will be due on Wednesday December 13th (By Noon). By the end of that day, I need an email
from you that contains:

1. A link to your (fabulously rhetorical) portfolio

2. Your (detailed) Reflection

However, as mentioned above, Id like to see you working on this portfolio throughout the semester. Here are
some good targets to try and hit in that process and times to try to have them done by, for those of you out there
that want to space things out.

By Week 9: Decide on what web design platform youll use (e.g., Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace,
Dreamweaver, etc.) and create a shell of your portfolio equipped with different, marked content pages
(you dont need to add actual content, but you need to have the pages set up so theyre ready for
content to be added).

By Week 11: Complete a polished draft of your portfolios home/landing page; to that end, make
sure to avoid the pitfalls of past portfolios (which well discuss in class sometime between Week 11 and
Week 13, as time permits).

By Week 13: Complete a polished draft of your portfolios rsum/CV page. Toward that end, think
about what information is pertinent and worth including considering your audience and target
professions, internships, and/or graduate schools. In addition, consider consciously the potential
affordances and limitations of how you present the rsum/CV (e.g., written in the portfolio, embedded
as a .docx or .pdf, or both).

By Week 14: Be prepared to bring in your current versions of your Professional/Academic portfolios
for in-class workshops on Tuesday, November 28th.

These will not be formally enforced, but these do and will serve as helpful guidelines to keep you moving
along, and Ill try to work in some discussions and time in class to let you work on these steps as well as time
progresses/allows.