NMC Portfolio
A collection of work that demonstrates one's development in designated areas. The NMC portfolio helps you track your learning in both Core Curriculum objectives and your program objectives.
Physically, the portfolio is a 3-ring binder or electronic space accessed through an online host site that holds samples of student work and experiences with a reflection page attached to each sample. The portfolio is divided into four sections (called "levels"), one for each year of a bachelor's degree program. Students in associate degree programs complete two levels. Every student in every associate's or bachelor's degree program maintains a portfolio to keep track of what experiences have been important to his or her learning. These experiences can come from school, work, personal or civic opportunities. The student decides what to include. Each portfolio level must be complete before the student moves on to the next level of education. A description of what is essential in the reflection is included later in this document.
Portfolios are used for a variety of reasons in different arenas. Artists and architects use them to demonstrate their best work in a manageable format, stock brokers use them to demonstrate their success in investing, and professionals use them to demonstrate their skills in relevant areas of interest. Clearly, one goal is for demonstration of skills and competencies.
Portfolios are useful for scholarship applications, job applications, and graduate school applications. They are a more complete way to share what you have learned with an audience (whether the audience is your grandmother or a potential employer). Rather than rely on the relatively "flat" information on a school transcript, portfolios provide more depth and rich information. The really short answer is "because it is a graduation requirement for all NMC undergraduate students."
Over the past ten years, it has become more common to see portfolios used as teaching tools in colleges and universities. There is a growing body of literature that draws the connection between a student's attention to experiences and learning. This may sound a little obscure. Don't students have to pay attention in order to complete courses successfully? The short answer is no. It is fairly common for students to focus on the individual tasks necessary to complete a course without ever considering the overall goals of the course. Think about a course you have taken recently. What was the purpose of that course? Why was it designed for your curriculum? How did the various objectives tie together?
The kind of attention we are talking about in portfolios is the kind that looks for connections: connections among various ideas presented in a course, connections between Anatomy & Physiology and Ethics, connections between the courses taken in the first year of a curriculum and those taken in the last year. Frequently, these connections do not become obvious until a student is near the end of a degree or even after graduation. By drawing the connections earlier, students benefit from having a context within which to place the various experiences.
Finally, students find value in a portfolio much like one finds value in a photo album. While on vacation you likely take photos of those events and scenes that seem significant at the time. Once the film is developed, you make some decisions about which pictures are the most appropriate to include in a photo album; you discard the ones that are out of focus or seem to be the same shot of the mountain. You pare down the stack to the photos that best represent your trip. Therefore, the process of putting photos in the album has value. It forces us to make decisions about what is most important to remember about a given experience.
The second value of a photo album comes months and years down the line. As time passes, our memory can fade about the details of a particular event or experience. We may find ourselves pulling out our photo album to refresh our memory or share the experience with some else. The photo album captures us at a particular point in time. The portfolio captures our learning at a particular point in time and across time. From this perspective, we can identify what conditions are present when we are at our academic and personal best and what conditions require us to draw from other resources. While your education may appear to culminate in a degree, it is actually just one stop in a lifetime of learning. The portfolio is a tool to make us aware of what we learn and how we learn it.
A visual picture of ePortfolio - Even if you do not maintain an Electronic Portfolio, the relationships are the same between evidence gathered and learning communicated.
The portfolio is organized into two main sections: the Educated Citizen goals and the professional goals of your program. You may add a third section for personal goals as well.
The Educated Citizen is a collection of goals and objectives that we believe all undergraduate students, regardless of program, should work to master during their time at NMC.
1. Reflective Individual A reflective individual routinely engages in habits of inquiry that influence ways of thinking and actions.
1. Integrate learning from a variety of disciplines.
A. Routinely engage in habits of inquiry such as logic and critical thinking.
B. Engage one or more humanities disciplines to influence ways of thinking and acting.
C. Engage one or more social science disciplines to influence ways of thinking and acting.
D. Apply the scientific method.
E. Analyze perspectives of holism.
2. Exhibit personal responsibility.
2. Effective Communicator An effective communicator uses critical thinking to generate, connect, and organize ideas in a written, oral and nonverbal manner.
1. Use appropriate written skills in varied contexts.
2. Use appropriate oral and nonverbal skills in varied contexts.
3. Use Spanish or other international languages in academic and community settings.
3. Change Agent A change agent uses the disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences to analyze historical and contemporary situations and systems, to develop cultural competence, and to take appropriate initiative to effect change.
1. Analyze historical and contemporary situations and systems.
A. Access information and resources.
B. Critically analyze current events using habits of inquiry unique to sociology, political science, history, religion and/or economics.
2. Develop cultural competence.
A. Demonstrate respect for others with alternative points of view.
B. Analyze power dynamics.
3. Take appropriate initiative to effect change.
A. Draw individuals and/or organizations together for a common purpose.
B. Create a voice for self and others.
Every program has identified specific learning outcomes for graduates in their program. By tracking your mastery of these outcomes, you will have a better sense of your development over time. Frequently, Educated Citizen goals and program goals will overlap.
Every student is unique. You may decide that college is a time to get involved in student organizations. You may be a working parent whose primary goal is to stay balanced between work, home and school. Whatever your situation, you can track your progress on these personal goals through your portfolio.
If you are earning an associate's degree, you are required to:
If you are earning a bachelor's degree, you are required to:
Students in the ACE, RN-BSN, and other short-term programs work with modified requirements to fit the amount of time they are at NMC. Please ask for information from the Portfolio Coordinator if you are unclear on the requirements of your program.
As you move through your education, experiences will begin to present themselves that cause you to reconsider your perspective, change your mind, or deepen your understanding. As these experiences occur, you will want to record them in your portfolio for future reference.
This step is essential to the development of a learning portfolio. Your portfolio is not just a file drawer of papers and assignments; it is a place to record not just what you did, but also what you learned from it, how it fits in the context of your education, and how you think you'll use the experience in the future.
If you have a paper portfolio, the paper that your reflections are recorded on is called a "cover sheet" If you are using an electronic portfolio, you will record your reflections in the "comments" area of each artifact you load to the ePortfolio.
To record an experience in your portfolio, follow the steps below:
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Collect examples of learning
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Pay attention to those experiences or assignments that surprise, challenge, confuse, or reaffirm you. Again, these can come from school, work, home, the community or broader global community.
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Select an example of learning
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From the many learning opportunities you have, select one that is especially significant to you.
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Consider what Educated Citizen goal and/or objective the experience fits under
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You decide which goal/objective best fits with what you learned or experienced in this example. It is possible that one experience may fit under more than one Educated Citizen goal/objective and/or a program outcome. For example, a conversation you have with a supervisor about taking time off work may fit under both Effective Communicator and the Personal Responsibility area of Reflective Individual. It fits under communication if you focus your reflection on using assertiveness skills or practicing positive non-verbal communication. It fits under personal responsibility if you spent time before you met with your supervisor analyzing the best steps to take for a positive outcome, considered your boss' preference for receiving information or took steps to find your own replacement before going to your supervisor. You decide what best fits with what you learned or experienced in this example.
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Reflect on your learning
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Once you have thought about what was significant in the experience, spend some time identifying some of the details of what was important. The next section leads you through the steps for reflection
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Prepare your reflection and artifact for entry in your portfolio
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Whenever possible it is good to have something that is an example of the work you discussed in your reflection; we call this the "artifact". The artifact could be a paper you wrote, an article clipped from the newspaper, your care plan, or a letter written to your landlord. Of course, this is not always possible, as when your reflection is about a conversation you had with your supervisor. Artifacts are not required, they just add to the effectiveness of the portfolio.
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Quite simply, reflection is the process of asking yourself, "What happened?" "Why did it happen?" and "What do I want to happen next time?" It is a process you frequently use without thinking about it. For example: You are stuck in traffic. You realize that this road has been congested the last two times you drove on it at this time. You make a decision to try an alternate route next time you need to go this direction at this time of day. Related to school it might look something like this: You take your first exam in a class and don't do as well as you had hoped. You realize that you spent more time memorizing minor parts than understanding how the information fit together. For the next test you prepare by focusing on the broader systems.
While these examples are rather simple, one goal of the portfolio is to further develop and support the skills necessary to be a reflective practitioner. We know that experts in a field know what questions to ask when faced with a new situation. They know these questions because they have practiced asking questions related to their field and developed a depth of knowledge that the novice does not have. They also begin to see patterns in the information and from those patterns can draw conclusions. Though everyone must begin at the novice level in a new discipline, we can build the skills of awareness, inquisitiveness, and reflection that are universally useful to becoming an expert.
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Broad Questions for Reflection |
Specific Questions |
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Whether you complete an electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) or paper portfolio, you will collect evidence (artifacts) of your progress toward meeting specific objectives. One artifact may fit under more than one goal or objective (e.g. A paper may fit under the Effective Communicator for your writing skills and a Change Agent objective for how you accessed resources). The goals are the Reflective Individual, the Effective Communicator and the Change Agent. The objectives are listed in the section "How is the Portfolio Organized?" Select one objective for each reflection.
Once you identify the artifact, your reflection may benefit from you rating the skill level that the learning experience demonstrates. In some ePortfolios, for example, there are even pre-stated categories of development to select: beginning, developing, competent, and advanced.
This is an opportunity for you to think about your progress toward proficiency in this objective. Would you consider this artifact to be evidence of just beginning to understand the objective, or does this artifact demonstrate a more advanced proficiency? This is a subjective rating scale and you may find yourself selecting numbers in non-sequential order as you progress through your education. This may take just a few sentences or a paragraph.
The second part of your reflection is an opportunity to summarize what you learned from constructing this artifact. This should not be a summary of the project/assignment/experience itself, but a reflection on what all you learned from the process. For example, if you submit a paper that you wrote for class, you might begin by expressing how you approached writing the paper. Did you review the paper requirements? Conduct research? Ask for help? What is the role of the writer? Do you feel you met that goal? How did you determine when the paper was "done"? What practices did you employ that you want to retain for the next written assignment? Are there any new skills you want to develop? This portion of the reflection should be one or two paragraphs.
Once you have thought about how you approached the artifact and what you learned from it, put the artifact in a larger context. How does this experience remind you of other experiences you have had? How does this experience contribute to the development of the Educated Citizen Core Curriculum objectives? What does it contribute to your education? Do you have goals tied to this objective? How might you accomplish those goals? These are broad questions and may be difficult to answer. In fact, you may list more questions than answers in this part! This should be one or two paragraphs as well
John Dewey, the American philosopher and reformer of education, once stated,
Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance. Reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful…To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry – these are the essentials of thinking. (Zubizarreta, 2004, p.8)
In this project I interviewed my aunt who is from the Philippines. She was able to help me understand more about her culture and what it was like to be a minority in the USA. This helped me to find what I could do to make others feel more comfortable.
I've mentioned my sign language class in nearly all of my papers. I really can't explain or put into words the impact that class had on my life. This was definitely an eye opening experience that changed me for the better. During that class, we had to write an opinion paper titled, "The Medical Profession is Finally Learning about the Deaf Culture." It was difficult to write about this particular subject because it's hard to determine the needs of the deaf community, when you have never experienced being deaf. Once our assignments were turned in, our teacher explained complications and needs of the deaf community in the healthcare setting. She explained the need for appropriate and competent interpreters and using the telecommunication systems. After learning this information, it made me think about the clinical sites I go to and how and/or whether they are prepared to accommodate deaf patients; so I took the initiative to ask the last two clinical sites I attended, what was their plan or if they even had one. One site had nothing and the other site had a card with words written out that said, "Hold your breath when you see the lights go off." The card was a start, but it would only work for certain examinations and if the patient(s) were unable to read the card, our communication is yet hampered. This shows that some places don't think about the diverse populations that they could serve.
It's better to be prepared rather than to wait for a situation to occur and you are unprepared. By this time, I would rate myself as advanced; I took an appropriate initiative to effect change by creating a voice for others. Because of the experience I've gained, I questioned the protocols at several facilities and learned that these places were not as prepared as they could have been to serve a diversified community. Changes were made because initiative was taken to engage change. My goal is to make sure that the place I work for is prepared and equipped to handle a diverse population of patients.
Reflections must be thoughtful, thorough, and reflective of the student's attention to the designated goal and/or objective. Guides are available on the ePortfolio Access site for assistance with the skills of critical reflection. Reflections are not summaries of the experiences, nor are they personal journals. Reflections are to demonstrate students' ability to analyze their learning from a variety of sources and to articulate for an audience the process of learning. A complete and satisfactory portfolio is a graduation requirement for all undergraduate students.
Reference:
Zubizarreta, J. (2004). The learning portfolio: Reflective practice for improving student learning. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.