Should college students create a portfolio of their work to show to future employers?

I just received an email letting me know that the following verbiage must be included in my syllabus for the next semester.

Quote:

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> Each student in General Education courses at SLCC will maintain
> > a General Education ePortfolio. Instructors in every Gen Ed
> > course will ask you to put at least one assignment from the
> > course into your ePortfolio, and accompany it with reflective
> > writing. It is a requirement in this class for you to add to
> > your ePortfolio.
> >
> > Your ePortfolio will allow you to include your educational
> > goals, describe your extracurricular activities, and post your
> > resume. When you finish your time at SLCC, your ePortfolio will
> > then be a multi-media showcase of your educational experience.
> >
> > For detailed information including a Student ePortfolio
> > Handbook, video tutorials for each ePortfolio platform, classes,
> > locations and times of free workshops and other in-person help,
> > visit www.slcc.edu/gened/eportfolio.

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Now, I see this and I think "Wot?" Apparently I wasn't the only one, because the emails have been flying back and forth. Several people have pointed out that this seems, quite frankly, like a waste of time. The general argument is that employers and grad schools don't care about assignments. They look at transcripts, grades, and letters of recommendation, but they don't look at how well you wrote your argument essay in Writing 2010. Also, students take general ed courses because they are required to. Some of my students are not great writers, and even their best work (after a semester of working and improving) would never be suitable to show to a prospective employer.

On the other hand, having a body of work to refer back to is not a bad thing. Transcripts do not tell the whole story, and I think that SLCC really wants to emphasis that they are more than just a community college with open enrollment. But I'm honestly struggling to find a rationale for this that makes sense. If I was required to do this as an undergrad, I'd be pretty annoyed, and I would probably ignore it.

So is there any real-world value in creating a "multi-media showcase of your educational experience"?

Seems like a colossal waste of time for 98% of the students who will be expected to do it, and free advertising for SLCC from the other 2%.

My school made us do this. It was, in fact, a graduation requirement to have a "multimedia portfolio." Do you know how often I have used anything in that? Yep. Once. To graduate.

Even the stuff I wrote that could potentially be used as work samples for writing assignments was utterly useless, because the shit I wrote in college is not what employers are looking for when it comes to writing samples.

I guess it's useful to save that stuff and it's good to look back on, but it's had zero impact on my life outside of being an undergrad.

I can see there would or could be value to this thing - but, in general, I'm not all that impressed. If I'm hiring a lab tech, for example, what the Hell do I care about how well he can deconstruct Romance Poetry? As long as he can communicate with the written word, it's just not an issue. And handing people too much data is often worse than handing them not enough - you get things taken out of context, or irrelevancies that distract from the real concerns.

To turn things around: How would you feel if you found that so-and-so was a shoe-in for a lab tech position, but because of her/his revisionist reading of The Raven the prospective employer decided he didn't want someone so revolutionary in their lab?

Thinking on it further, it occurs to me that if I was hiring somebody--say, for an editing job--and seeing samples of what they could do with the written word might be useful, I'd actually be turned off with a multimedia showcase of their educational experience they created as an undergrad. That, to me, would tell me this poor kid is utterly clueless about how the world works and is wasting my time with fluff.

I have asked people I was interviewing to bring in a print out of some of their code and back in the pre-CAD days it was normal for engineers and draftsmen to bring a few drawings with them. So I guess it is by field and not a general rule.

But Jim, that's vastly different than getting a multi-media sampling of every course the yutz took in college.

Quote:

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Originally posted by What Exit?

I have asked people I was interviewing to bring in a print out of some of their code and back in the pre-CAD days it was normal for engineers and draftsmen to bring a few drawings with them. So I guess it is by field and not a general rule.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by OtakuLoki

But Jim, that's vastly different than getting a multi-media sampling of every course the yutz took in college.

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Exactly. I've had prospective employers request writing samples. What they did not want or need was something from my Intro to Writing class.

Also, this particular portfolio is only for the general ed courses. Which means if you are an English major taking Lit courses, you would not include the rather brilliant analysis of the The Raven. You'd include the research essay about veganism you wrote your freshman year in the required Writing 1010 course. Which doesn't reflect your true abilities or your true interests.

OK, I guess I did not read the level of stupidity in the requirement. For an Engineer to bring in an Essay from his Writing Composition class to a job interview would be a bad joke and reflect not very well. I was thinking multi-media would at least be semi-pertinent to the job interview.

This sounds like a silly busywork requirement conceived of by a committee of people who haven't seen the world outside of a school building in a decade or two.

Who are being advised by hip consultants who have sold them on the idea that multi-media presentations are welcomed everywhere!

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This e-portfolio initiative has been in the works for a number of years; we are well beyond the debate over whether we should be doing it at all.

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That was the response to several legitimate protests. I'm stunned by the claim that they've been discussing it for "a number of years." Given the reactions I've already seen, clearly I wasn't the only person not aware of these discussions.

It must have been a "number of years" ago that they came up with this idea, back when the world "multimedia" was thought to automatically make things cool and useful.

Seriously, this sounds like it was designed to make the administrators look/feel good - not actually help students. If they launch this e-portfolio thing, it will look good on their resumes.

And justify the thousands that have been spent on the consultants I mentioned above. ;)

Lord. I just finished writing a paper written for the healthcare provider audience, the same people I'm going to be applying to for jobs in a couple months. I can't imagine interviewers having the least bit of interest in slogging through it, and if I included it with applications and resumes, I should think they'd just say, "what is all THIS extra shit?" and throw the whole thing out. I mean, there's all this emphasis on concise cover letter, absolutely no more than a one-page resume...and a portfolio? Even if it were all specifically relevant to the job, which it sounds like it isn't, it seems like it would be a turnoff to potential employers.

So, I guess they can force the students and instructors to take the steps necessary to create these "multimedia showcases."

But, they can't force students to use it when they apply for jobs, can they?

Pepper, from what you've described it sounds like your best bet might be to join forces with some of the other instructors who think this is a waste of time, and ask that this idiocy - excuse me "innovative but untested idea" - if it must be instituted, be rigorously evaluated. Surely they can keep track of how often students use their "showcases" and collect anecdotes of "How My MultiMedia Showcase Got Me a Cool Job."

If, after a year, there is little indication that students are using the showcases and even less that employers give a shit, maybe this can go away...