EDT 180A, B, & D Portfolio Assignment

Spring 18
Final Due Date:
Wednesday, April 25 by 11:59 PM -- Late work NOT accepted on this assignment

Assignment Description:
Using web page and graphic development tools, you will design and create a showcase portfolio. You will
incorporate artifacts (examples) from EDT 180, and potentially: other courses, your personal life, and your job.
Creativity and organization is emphasized.

This is the most extensive assignment from the course and is worth 200 points, twenty percent of your course
grade. In grading the assignment, I break it down into categories in the following manner:

Design Considerations
• Use of graphics and color
• Clear layout
Content Considerations
• Clear purpose and descriptions, spelling, and grammar
• Representative work samples
Structure and Function
• Logical site structure
• Links are functional
• Documents are in proper format

This assignment requires initiative from the student. I will show you how to use Weebly and Photoshop well
enough to get started on the assignment and provide the main parameters for the assignment. I will show you
some examples and we will build the structure of the portfolio. However, I will not be providing a high level of
“handholding” throughout the entire process. Between my instruction, online resources, your initiative, and
help from your peers, you should do a fine job (as nearly everyone has in prior semesters). You are to be
creative and stretch yourself as you build your portfolio. Some class time is provided to work on the
assignment; however, this will still require an investment of time outside of class. You would be wise to do
as much as you can outside of class and bring your problems to class where you have easy access to me (and
your classmates too).

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Planning Your Portfolio
What artifacts should you include? The artifacts should be something representative of all the programs we
have used and assignments in the course. There are required artifacts for each program as well as optional
artifacts. NOTE: For the optional artifacts, you do not necessarily have to include every single document you
created; these are possibilities to start your thinking. Remember the main idea of this portfolio is to showcase
what you know and can do; it is not an archive of every little thing you have done.

Program Required Artifacts Format Required in Optional Artifacts (with

Portfolio filenames of your choosing)
Word o Research Project paper o Embedded documents o Exercises 1 – 4
o Reflection Paper in Word format o Additional documents you
may have created for your
job, school, or personal life
Excel o Excel Application o Embedded documents o Exercises 1 & 2
o Research Project Analysis in Excel format or o Additional spreadsheets
converted to PDF if you may have created for
need be your job, school, or
personal life
PowerPoint o “In Class” Exercise o Embedded documents o Additional presentations
o Research Project in PowerPoint format you may have created for
Presentation or PDF if need be your job, school, or
personal life
Publisher o Group Exercise o Embedded documents o Extra credit
o Application(s) in PDF format o Additional publications you
may have created for your
job, school, or personal life
Photoshop o At least one graphic created o Inserted image o Additional graphics you
or modified and used may have created for your
somewhere in the portfolio job, school, or personal life
(the title banner we created
in class meets this
requirement whether you
use it as a banner or put it on
your Photoshop page)
Readings o Two readings of your o Copy and paste your o Additional reading
choice. original response to the assignments as you wish.
reading on the
appropriate page
Research o Links to the Project artifacts o N/A o
Project on your Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint page
Digital o Your Digital Storytelling o Embedded code o
Storytelling* video
*This is may or may not be required depending on how our o
schedule works out. If we do this assignment, it will be
required in the portfolio otherwise it won’t be required.

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Evaluation
This checklist lists the minimum requirements to receive full credit:

Design Considerations
• Use of graphics, fonts, and color
o Usually most any theme will suffice for this.
o At least one graphic on each page (the banner qualifies as a graphic)
o Color/font choices have good contrast and clarity (readability is much more important than
“style”)
• Clear layout
o Clear, consistent navigation links (usually not a problem at all in Weebly)
o Consistency in title and body text placement and alignment

Content Considerations
• Clear purpose and descriptions, spelling, and grammar
o Descriptions are fully developed as opposed to mere labeling. Read and emulate the
examples posted on Blackboard or in the Weebly directions site under “What Should
I Write?”.
o Only one or two spelling and/or grammar errors at the most
• Representative work samples
o All required artifacts are included (see table on page 2)

Structure and Function

• Logical site structure
o Pages are used to organize and explain artifact files
 Home page
 Contact Me
 Assignments
• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Publisher
• Photoshop
• Readings
• Research Project
• Digital Storytelling (This will be required IF we do this assignment. If we
do not do this assignment, then do not created a page
for it.)
 Just For Fun/miscellaneous (optional - up to 10 points extra credit)
 Credits/Acknowledgments – required. Claim credit for anything that is yours and
give credit for everything else that is
o Used under license (like Weebly graphics)
o Used under your claim of Fair Use
o Used under a Creative Commons license. Be
sure to comply with the terms of the licenses
all of which require at least attribution.

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 In the Pages view in the Weebly editor your pages should look like this:

• Links are functional

o Navigation links between pages work properly on every page (usually automatic in Weebly
sites)
o Links to any artifacts not embedded and any external links all function properly
• Documents are in proper format
o Images are in JPG format (GIF, WMF, & PNG formats are also okay)
o All other artifacts are embedded using the Documents page element and any that will not
display, should be converted to PDF format and then embedded. NOTE: Publish your
portfolio to actually determine if the document will not properly display.

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Important Tips
HELP! What do I do if I no longer have that document? There is no need to panic. Every file you
uploaded to Blackboard is still there and available for you to download. Go into your Grades,
find the assignment in question, and click on the score (or the exclamation point icon if
ungraded). Depending on the file type you either see the document in preview or a large
download button. On the right side you always see your linked file name and an icon to
download the file.

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! – Once uploaded to Weebly this is not as critical an issue until
you discover you uploaded the wrong files. KEEP BACKUPS! No kidding!

Potentially when editing pages in Weebly, you might inadvertently delete some of what you
wrote. One way to prevent this is to do all your writing in a word processor and then copy and
paste it into your Weebly. This also has the advantage of catching at least some spelling and
grammar errors.

Copyright/Fair Use matters! -- If you use copyrighted materials, follow Fair Use guidelines.
The easiest way to avoid copyright issues is to create your own graphics, however, you could
also find graphics licensed under Creative Commons. Of course, if you do, remember to give
appropriate attribution on your credit page.

If you are inexperienced at creating web pages, as most of you are, stick with using Weebly to
create your portfolio. If you wish to use another service instead of Weebly, you may, just
understand I will not offer support for anything other than Weebly.

DO NOT put this off until the end! You will have PLENTY of other assignments and tasks to do
for other classes at the end. Get as much of this done as you can as soon as you can. RESIST the
temptation to leave class early when we have work time. That time is for you to WORK with
easy access to me when you have questions. In addition, remember per the syllabus, leaving
early without prior permission will get you counted as absent for the day.

READ these directions COMPLETELY, multiple times to make sure you do not misunderstand
something.

PROOFREAD your entire portfolio! Remember, potentially you will share this with prospective
employers and spelling and grammar errors directly impact their impression of you.

Do not get hung up in making the design perfect. The perfect web page/site/portfolio does not
exist and never will. There will ALWAYS be something you can change to make it ‘better.’
Trust the voice of experience on this; you can easily get sucked into spending an embarrassing
number of hours trying to do some subtle thing that no one else is going to notice. You have
other classes and responsibilities. Work on your portfolio to the point it meets the assignment
requirements then meet the responsibilities of your other classes and THEN if you still have the
extra time and interest you can tweak your portfolio all you want.

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Also, related to avoiding perfection, web pages are not like normal documents you have created
in the past. They may look vastly different depending on the computer and browser used to view
them. There are some very sophisticated ways and tools to try to make pages look the same no
matter what, but those are beyond the scope of this assignment and class.

Finally, I should not have to remind you about this, but considering it has happened before, let
me make this simple: if you plagiarize, you fail the course. Period.

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