Suggestions for Preparing a Portfolio
Your Purpose
Your purpose in preparing a portfolio for the Regents Bachelor of Arts program is to present your knowledge, skills, and competencies in such a way as to receive credit for what you have learned outside the walls of conventional college classrooms.For example:
* You may have worked as a secretary, managed a real estate office, worked in a coal mine, built houses, painted pictures, organized fund raising drives, taught children, or counseled adults.
*You may have worked as a salesperson, a clergyperson, or developed a program to shelter abused children or spouses.
*You may have driven an ambulance, piloted an airplane, worked as a nurse, or repaired computers.
*You may have learned to play a musical instrument or you may have learned a great deal about the American Civil War through extensive reading and through visits to museums and battlefields.
Adult students in the Regents BA (RBA) program have gained college-equivalent credit for all of these examples of "prior learning" and for many other kinds of paid work, community service, and independent study.
Standardized Credit Awards
Before you engage in the work of preparing a detailed portfolio describing your learning experiences, you should find out from the RBA Office whether any of your licenses, certificates, or diplomas can gain college credit for you without a written presentation.Several standardized credit awards have been established by the statewide RBA program in the health area. For example: A 45-credit-hour award for a Registered Nurse license; 15 hours of Licensed Practical Nurse; 5 hours for EMT national registry; 55 hours for a registered X-Ray Technologist, etc. Other standardized credit awards have been set up for graduates of the West Virginia State Policy Academy, for licensed professional embalmers, and for those earning private, commercial and other types of FAA pilot's licenses.
For a complete list of the standardized credit awards, please follow the link provided below:
http://rba.as.wvu.edu/standardized_awards.htm
In addition to the standardized credit awards which are set by the state, a number of corporations, associations, and government agencies teach courses which have been evaluated by the American Council on Education (ACE) .
Examples of these are courses offered by the American Institute of Banking and the United States Department of Agriculture. ACE official credit awards will be honored in WVU's RBA program, and this could save you a lot of work! (ACE Guides are available in the WVU RBA Office for you to look through.)
Those who have been in the service can probably receive military science credit for their military service and for special training received while in the armed forces without writing a portfolio and without even paying the $300 portfolio fee. Bring your DD-214 and any other military documents to the RBA Office so we can check for you.
Getting Started
Let's assume that some or all of your prior learning is not covered by standardized credit awards, so that you will need to present a written portfolio detailing your experience and your knowledge. What follows is intended to help you in this difficult but exciting and rewarding project!In order to enhance your chances for receiving college credit, you need to present your prior learning in the strongest possible way, and you need to understand what faculty evaluators are looking for in a portfolio.
As a starting point you need to know that portfolios have four main components:
A. An overview of your personal, academic, and employment history, either through a resume or a first-person narrative that cites life experiences relevant to the credits you are seeking. (Don't write about your dog unless you want animal science credit!)
B. A master list (organized by academic departments) identifying all the academic credits you are seeking. (If you request credit from more than one institution, list each institution separately.) This list provides an overview of your credit requests.
C. A written narrative justifying each of the "requests for credit" listed in "B" which details your knowledge and skills in that area.
D. A documentation section which contains the documents that support the claims and requests made in the above two sections--e.g., letters, diplomas, certificates, awards, samples of work performed, etc.
How do you get started on the process of describing your skills and knowledge -- your "prior learning"?
Make An Inventory of Your Knowledge and Skills
Here you are trying to answer the questions, "What do I know?" and "What skills do I have?" As a portfolio writer, you need to be able to answer these questions in considerable detail and with confidence and conviction--all of which takes time to achieve.
Perhaps the easiest way to begin the process is by writing a resume which details your education so far, lists your awards and achievements (don't be too modest!), and gives a detailed description of the duties and responsibilities in the various jobs you have held, and other activities you have engaged in.
In the second stage of this process, you need to "unpack" each of your pursuits (whether paid jobs, hobbies, or volunteer work) and ask and answer in detail,
"What did I need to know in order to do this?" and "What did I learn in the process of doing it?"
If you received any kind of training, you should describe what the training covered, how long it lasted (total hours of training), what kinds of testing and review procedures were used, and how well you performed on any tests or performance reviews.
Now try listing and "unpacking" all of the awards and other signs of recognition that you have received over the years, including:
Professional licenses and certificates;
Memberships and offices held in professional and trade organizations;
Awards, citations, and letters of commendation;
Books, papers, manuals or pamphlets you have written or helped to compose;
Occasions when you've been a lecturer, panelist, or presenter "in the limelight."
In each of these, what did you have to know? What did you achieve or contribute? What concrete evidence of this knowledge can you present to an evaluator?
If you have undertaken private study (like the Civil War buff mentioned earlier), now is the time to unpack that activity. You should summarize all of the activities that contributed to your knowledge in that area (in the case of our example, visits to museums and battlefields and attendance at lectures relating to the Civil War). You could also compile a list of all reading done in your field of study, and then "annotate" each entry with a brief description of the book or article and what it contains. You could assess the value of the various sources you cite to show your depth of knowledge.
Know the Characteristics of Creditable Learning
Now that you've worked up your resume and your inventory, you're probably wondering what kinds of skills and knowledge faculty will be looking for when they evaluate your portfolio. According to the literature (yes, there are books about writing portfolios!), and according to our experience in the RBA Office , people who try to evaluate portfolios are looking for learning that has three characteristics:1. Measurability is enhanced by your inclusion of hours (weeks, months, years) spent doing the activity, even if this can only be estimated; numbers of times an activity was performed (e.g., numbers of short talks or slide shows presented; numbers of pictures painted, brochures or business letters written, etc.). Measurability is also enhanced by testing and other performance reviews you have received.
2. Theoretical learning is generally that kind emphasized in college courses, so this is what you need to stress. You may know how to survey terrain where a road will be built, or you may have raised children who are successful in their lives--but unless you can write about the geometry or trigonometry used by surveyors or about the theories of parenting and child development taught in a college class on the subject, you are not likely to receive credit for your practical knowledge.
3. Generalized knowledge comes from learning that relates to a wide variety of applications. Knowing how to hang-glide or how to place explosives when blasting in a mine are such specific skills that you're unlikely to get college credit for them unless you can show how they relate to a more general understanding of aerodynamics or the chemistry of explosives. By contrast, knowing how to make sales presentations or how to organize community-wide events--these involve much more generalized skills that can be applied in other areas of life even if your specific experience was selling insurance or organizing a Special Olympics event.
Looking for The Right Course
The materials you have assembled so far will provide the basis for writing your portfolio. But you still need to identify courses that are related to your knowledge and skills, and this isn't always easy. It is only after identifying specific courses for possible college-equivalent credit that you will be ready to write the narratives that justify your credit requests.As a first step, acquire the most recent West Virginia University Undergraduate Catalog .
Read through all the course descriptions, department by department, and identify all of the courses which you want to consider for inclusion in your credit requests.
Study the catalog descriptions (or course outlines or textbooks used) for the courses you have identified. What is actually taught in the course, and can you match it or approximate it to your prior learning? Is this a basic course covering general information about a field or subject, or is it an advanced course, perhaps one with some pre-requisites (symbolized in the catalog with "PR")?
Do you have the appropriate background--e.g., do you have the calculus background which is a pre-requisite to Physics 11? Do you know something about the full range of topics covered in the course?
Be sure to check the Departmental Guidelines for Awarding Portfolio Credit which may have specific comments on individual courses and how to obtain college-equivalent credit. If you don't find your knowledge reflected in a department's regular course offerings, you can request credit for a "special topics" course or for "field work" or for "independent study." And don't hesitate to ask the RBA Office for ideas--we have lots of experience. Many students make appointments just to get ideas about what credits to request.
As implied so far, your credit requests must target WVU courses if WVU has a department that teaches the knowledge or skills in question. You can't go credit shopping among institutions.
If the West Virginia University catalog does not contain the programs or departments you need, then (and only then!) you may use the catalogs of other schools in the West Virginia State System of Higher Education. For example, WVU does not have a Department of Office Administration, so students with knowledge of office operations (secretarial skills) often request credit for Office Administration courses at Fairmont State College . Catalogs from other state colleges are available on the Internet and at the RBA Office.
Where to Submit a Portfolio
All portfolio material is submitted to the WVU RBA Office whether it involves requests for credit from departments at WVU or at another institution. Note also that you should never send a portfolio directly to a department or faculty member yourself.Creating the Narrative
NOW COMES THE HARD PART, which is writing the narrative essay(s) which support each credit request, detailing your experiential learning and skills in relation to that course--telling, in other words, why the evaluator should give you credit. (If more practicable, a group of courses in one subject may be clustered together and supported with one essay. For example, if you are requesting credit for Accounting 51 and 52, you could place them together and write a single supporting narrative.)You may look at writing the narrative as an interview. Instead of interviewing for a job, you are interviewing for a class (or classes). If you were interviewing for this course, what would you include? What do you thnk the interviewer wants to hear?
The same knowledge is necessary:
How long have you been doing the job?
What skills have you obtained doing the job?
What knowledge have you gained from doing the job?
Now change this to whatever course you are writing for.
How long have you been doing (accounting, office management, oral presentations, etc),
what skills have you developed (balance sheets, how to do a spreadsheet management, using office technology, etc),
what kowledge have you acquired (understanding of accounting principles, working with people, time management using office machines).
Your aim in writing your supporting essays is to justify the credit request which you are presenting, course by course and department by department. Your credentials alone--even though they are very impressive--will not do this. Be very specific about the credits you are requesting. Give the name of the department as well as the course number and the full name of the course.
For example: "English 105/202: Business and Professional Writing," or "English 208/305: Scientific and Technical Writing." Do not refer to courses by page numbers from the Undergraduate Catalog: those change every year! Then you need to continue with a narrative that summarized your knowledge of business English or technical writing skills. The materials you gathered and the thinking you did in your initial stages of preparation (e.g., your resume and your inventory of skills and knowledge) should come in handy now!
Documentation
Your portfolio will also need to contain the documentation supporting the materials presented in your narrative essay(s). Here you have a chance to include all of those certificates and diplomas and clippings, blueprints and paintings, or the articles, books, brochures and papers written, or the music composed. You can also include letters of recommendation from current or past supervisors, and copies of job descriptions detailing your job responsibilities and spelling out the areas of knowledge and skill you needed to perform your work. Remember, you aren't expected to present proof of everything you've ever done, but you do need some documentation for all your major activities.Putting it All Together
ASSEMBLING THE PORTFOLIO is easy after what you've been through by now! The main thing is to present your materials as clearly as possible, so that your reader/evaluator can make his or her way through with a minimum of effort--e.g., tell the reader where to find specific documentation--e.g., "in Appendix C." Also, your portfolio should look as professional as possible. Use good quality materials; you're worth it! Handwritten portfolios are normally considered inappropriate.Your portfolio materials must be broken down by department or program and then placed in separate binders. For example, you might compile one notebook or binder to send to Fairmont State for Office Administration credits, another to send to WVU's English Department for Business English credit, and three additional notebooks that will go to the Accounting Department, Management Department, and Marketing Department for appropriate credits in these three areas of WVU's College of Business and Economics--that's five separate notebooks. You will probably use the same resume materials in each--just photocopy them. Likewise much of your documentation will likely get multiple use.
Now is the time to provide a title page and a table of contents. The sections of your portfolio should be clearly set apart by dividers and labels. Your title page might say something like the following (spaced out appropriately!):
Your Name
A Portfolio of Learning Experiences
Regents Bachelor of Arts Program
West Virginia University
Submitted (Date)
Final Advice
---- Back Up for a Moment! ----It's a good idea to submit drafts of at least some of your portfolio materials to the RBA Office for preliminary evaluation before everything is put in final form--just to make sure you are on the right track. A final reminder: pay careful attention to the regulations and policies established by the RBA Office. See the Regulations Governing Submission of Portfolios especially noting that there are only two 4-week periods during each year when portfolios may be submitted for official evaluation. You will also need to pay your portfolio fee!
Good Luck, and stay in touch with the RBA Office .
We're here to help you!