The CareerTech Portfolio system makes one think of a quote attributed to John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Students can easily forget past accomplishments and miss the significance of today’s accomplishments when their focus is solely on the future. An e-portfolio system gives students a practical means of capturing the essence of the college experience while the memories are still fresh.

CareerTech Portfolio is the new e-portfolio system for Georgia Tech students. This self-service, Web-based system will give students a convenient and effective way to document and track their curricular and co-curricular accomplishments throughout their years at Georgia Tech. The systems enables students to build a portfolio gradually over time by adding experiences to a skills matrix and posting digital versions of papers, reports, presentations, speeches, and other products of learning activities.

“The skills matrix is the most important part,” said Ralph Mobley, director of Career Services. “Developing the skills matrix teaches the student to reflect on each experience and describe the skills learned or enhanced.” According to Mobley, this will help students write better resumes, cover letters, and graduate school admission essays, and increase their ability to articulate qualifications and accomplishments in person, for example, during interviews and in professional networking situations.

The skills matrix categorizes learning experiences as courses, jobs, volunteering, memberships, interests, and scholarship. These can be correlated to nine key skill categories: communications, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, professional development, research, social responsibility, teamwork, and technical. The student can define three additional skill categories. “The skills matrix captures on one screen the essence of the student’s college experience,” added Mobley.

Students can share their portfolio contents by giving access to guests, such as faculty, employers, and schools. The guests then log into the system and see whatever content the student has defined as viewable by that particular guest. The system keeps a log of any guests who have visited.

Another feature of CareerTech Portfolio is a template with resume categories. Students can capture portfolio information into the template and edit the file offline to create resumes. The portfolio will be available online two semesters beyond the last term that the student is actively enrolled in classes.

The seed for the CareerTech Portfolio was planted in 2003 when Georgia Tech student leaders approached administrators with a request for a “co-curricular transcript” to augment the academic transcript that the Institute provides for each student. Staff researched available products on the market, including an SCT Banner product, and evaluated systems in use at other schools. They found a potential solution in the form of an e-portfolio system at Florida State University that offered more value to the student than a co-curricular transcript. Ultimately Georgia Tech chose to design a new system based on the FSU model with the addition of the resume template and other functions.

In June 2005, OIT’s Enterprise Information Systems, in partnership with a leadership team from Student Affairs, started designing and building the e-portfolio system using ColdFusion, an application development tool. Students participated in the project by assisting with requirements definition and user testing. EIS expects to launch CareerTech Portfolio into production in April 2006.

CareerTech Portfolio will be formally introduced to the student population this coming summer at FASET freshman orientation sessions and in GT1000 freshman seminars. “Freshmen have the best opportunity to keep up with the portfolio over time,” said Mobley. “Grad students and seniors told us that one of their struggles was remembering things they had done years before.”

Career Services would like to see CareerTech Portfolio become embedded in the fabric of Georgia Tech, with the expectation that e-portfolios will provide a competitive edge for students while they are here as well as upon graduation.

More information

Watch for more news and information about this new service in April.

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