I mentioned recently how one of our faculty members had created an electronic portfolio for his faculty evaluation process. Well something funny happened in a very short time span.
John was contacted by the link in his eportfolio by two students on the east coast who had searched Google for “online anatomy physiology course” and his eportfolio was within the first 10 hits. One has already registered for his next course at Phoenix College, and the other one asked first if the course was accredited (and it is and very transferrable), and she and her husband are registering this week.
John was rather astounded at how this happened. Does this give any indication as to how todays students make their choices?
Also, this likely will not happen again. the ePortfolio is on a new server, and we had neglected to place a robots exclusion rule on the web site– I really do not want Google crawling student and faculty eportfolios, so we are excluding all robots until someone thinks of a reason not to worry about this (and I am questioning about how well robots obey the rules).
But John is quick— he saw right away he could put an entry for his eportfolio in the Maricopa Learning eXchange, which does get indexed by Google, and he would still be able to make the connection.
This is a great idea. I put together an e-portfolio last year as part of a pilot study for a new online instructor evaluation tool. It has come in handy many times, and I include the URL on my resume and cover letters. It must be working… I’ve had several very good job offers in the last 3 months!
Debby
http://www.collegeteacher.org/portfolio/