Students' Learning
Students experience a number of challenges in identifying and describing their skill areas. For example, perceiving a lack of experience or current experience may make it difficult for a student to confidently articulate skill areas.
In this excerpted statement, Bill reveals that he is struggling with what he sees as his inexperience in the work world:
Well, for a couple of weeks I've been brainstorming and coming up with a new and improved portfolio. No, seriously, as a young and inexperienced worker, I feel that my portfolio categories should be a little more vague and general, at least in the skill areas. I want to encompass more soft skills and clump seemingly unrelated skills together under one more catchy skill title since I don't have years of experience in any one area. Therefore, I've decided to create the Three C's and name my skill areas Communication, Comprehension, and Cyber. I feel I will be able to stay with my intended ideas of subcategorizing these skills and keeping the outline form of the portfolio that I've wanted to all along. I'm now working on "sheets" of skills under each so that this will make more sense. It is hard right now to explain it, so please ask any initial questions you may have. Explaining it will help create it.
Bill, in another entry, responds to a question about “comprehension”:
Comprehension is the tough one, true. It will include my ability to pick up new tasks and learn new jobs quickly. It will include my abilities to deal with new people and situations. It is very much a soft skill and will take some outlining and brainstorming to remember how I got the skills and how to "show" others how my skills of comprehending tasks, systems, processes, protocol, supervisors, customers, etc. will be helpful to an organization.
Rachel, another student, is trying to articulate her skills and work on her career goals.
The problem I have with documenting skill areas is that I don’t have experience that directly relates in any way to them. The skill set I have chosen has been gained through college mainly such as management and human resources. My problem is unlike most of the class who has had many years of experience that relates in some way to their skill areas. So, to gain experience earlier this week I applied to several entry level part-time positions in hopes of curing this problem. In the meantime, I was thinking to use some school documents and point out how they indirectly relate to skills needed for those areas. I was also thinking to change a skill area but I am still playing with that - not sure what I would change one of them to.
Gaps in Experience
Challenges occur not only in naming and defining skill areas, but also in determining supporting documents. Students may not have access due to proprietary issues or transitioning between organizations or out of the work force. Susan, a mother at home with a two-year-old, notes a common problem.
My three skills areas are Human Resources/Recruitment, Leadership/Mentoring and Training. Where am I in this process? Well, I'm exactly where I was at the end of 487, which is to say not very far. I have not added new documents to my portfolio and have been trying to piece together newly written documents describing projects I either created or worked on while I was employed last in 2000. This is more time consuming than I thought- first, because it's getting more and more difficult to remember everything I had worked on and secondly because I don't have access to those documents. So, I've been trying to connect with people I worked with three to four years ago to make sure I have the pieces fitting together where they should. I'm also trying to tap into past mentors- which is easier said than done since they just happen to be over-worked workaholics who don't seem to have enough time for their own work, so sitting down with me at the first of the year has been a little difficult. I guess at this point, I feel like what I have is sparse but all right and that I probably can't crank out fast enough the supporting documents I want to have. I'm also feeling a little handicapped by not presently working and not having worked in three years. But I'll get there!
Doing, not documenting
Becky discusses the challenges of documenting what she does – the “doing” – and begins a dialogue with Monica on how to articulate and present what they do in the workplace.
Becky: Writing about what I do has been a real stumbling block for me. I'm a "doer", so it's hard for me to sit down and think about how to present exactly what it is I "do". The site that Lena shared had some excellent ideas. My three skills: Training Communication (although I'm thinking of changing this to Community Relations) Project Management/Process Improvement On the process improvement side, Lena's site has given me some ideas about writing about a couple of departments that I've worked with to get through a process improvement from start to finish - I think I could write something pretty interesting that would show us moving from identification of the process that's "broken" through the painful (yet productive) process of pinpointing the problem, brainstorming around possible "fixes", actually implementing a "test" fix, then checking against established benchmarks for results. Thoughts?
Monica to Becky : I am a bit like you in that I find it difficult to actually write about what I "do." I'd rather (excuse the reference to the over-used advertisement-phrase) JUST DO IT! Something I was thinking about for you to use in your portfolio: You had said that you couldn't use much of the projects you've been a part of at your employer because of proprietary reasons.... Well, on the site that Bill had looked up on e-ports, it had a recommendation to use "posters or flyers" from a project you worked on. Now, you may not have any posters, but the idea of simply putting a "teaser" on the site, and then allowing you to explain the project without using proprietary specifics sounded like a good idea to me... Anyway--just a thought!
We found the exchange between Becky and Monica to be especially provocative when considered in light of Donald Schon’s work (1991, 1987, 1983) on reflection in action and the reflective practitioner. Theoretically speaking, reflection on one’s practice should allow a professional to define an unclear situation, evaluate alternative solutions to problems, and consider feedback on previous decisions and actions. A reflective practitioner is less rule-bound and more flexible than a professional who does not engage in reflection. Although Becky identifies herself as a “doer” rather than a reflector, her writing in the discussion forum moves toward a theorizing of her experience. The italics in Becky’s following statement indicate emerging reflective and theoretical concepts for Becky. She writes, “I think I could write something pretty interesting that would show us moving from identification of the process that's ‘broken’ through the painful (yet productive) process of pinpointing the problem, brainstorming around possible ‘fixes,’ actually implementing a ‘test’ fix, then checking against established benchmarks for results.”For this group of students, we also found that reflection was a collaborative process. Both the technology and the difficulties of using the technology helped create an environment where students talked with one another. Their discussions drove forward their reflections, shaped the samples they selected for their portfolios, and impacted the ways in which they felt they owned their work and their portfolios.
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Working (on) Electronic Portfolios
Connecting
Academic Work and
the Workplace