Documenting Your Honors Experiences
As an Honors Scholar, you will add to your ePortfolio each semester so you are prepared to submit your culminating Senior Honors ePortfolio in your final semester.
Why document your honors experiences?
An important component of your Honors education is the creation of an ePortfolio over the course of your college career. This will allow you to showcase the learning and skills you have developed in your Honors courses and experiences and can eventually serve as a professional showcase for graduate school or your career.
​
Throughout your time in the Honors College you will add both curricular and co-curricular experiences to your ePortfolio and reflect on your learning. Many skills you develop will be learned in experiences outside the classroom - internships, service learning, research, student organizations, and/or leadership programs to name a few. When you participate in these types of experiences you should be adding those to your ePortfolio.
Here are some benefits you can experience from an ePortfolio:
1
Find your purpose: You may have a good idea of what you want to do with your life and how your college experience will help you get there, or maybe you aren’t so sure. An ePortfolio gives you a place to figure out who you are and who you want to be, and even change your path when things don’t go as planned.
2
Set goals and see your progress: Your degree map tells you which courses to take, but it doesn't showcase what you have learned. Your ePortfolio is a place for you to capture what you have learned in your classes and to show off all of your learning from experiences outside of the classroom.
3
Prepare for internships, scholarships, and jobs: Your ePortfolio will help you tell the story of all your skills, strengths, and experiences. Putting the pieces together will give you important practice to talk clearly and succinctly about your experiences, goals, and accomplishments. And sharing your ePortfolio with faculty will help you get better and more detailed recommendation letters.
Reflecting on Your Experiences
An important component of your honors experience is the creation of an ePortfolio, which will allow you to showcase your experience and reflect on the learning and skills you have developed in the process.
For each experience, you will include the following:
​
-
Narrative/summary of the experience with a reflection
-
​An artifact to represent the experience/what you learned
Narrative with Reflection
When creating the narrative, think of telling the story of your journey. The format of your narrative can be written, video, podcast, etc. It should be reflective and professional and rely heavily on the framing of your evidence of learning and growth.
When writing your reflection and discussing your growth as a result of this experience, be sure to answer the So What? Now What? questions:
​
-
Create meaning for that experience
-
Explain the importance of the experience and its influence on your future
-
Describe the impact it made on you
-
Discuss what you accomplished/contributed
-
Highlight what you learned
-
Outline the knowledge, values, skills, abilities you gained
Artifacts
Add an artifact to support both the narrative and reflection as evidence representing your journey. The artifact should help illustrate your experience. Possible examples include, but are not limited to:
​
-
Posters
-
Presentations
-
Projects
-
Research papers
-
Course modules, activities, assignments
-
Evaluations
-
Thought leadership (blogs, social media)
-
Testimonials
-
Pictures/images
-
Videos
-
Quotes
Criteria for Success:
-
Create a well thought-out design and layout for your ePortfolio that represents your personality.
-
Be sure to publish your ePortfolio and make certain that all entries, pictures, links/attachments, etc. are public.
-
Include all required entries.
-
For each entry include a summary, reflection, and artifact. Make sure to give your artifact a title and a timeframe (when did you complete it?).
-
Submit your ePortfolio URL.