Steps in the Process

In creating an organizational system for your portfolio, this information will help you to clearly connect your evidence to the requirements for your department and the university. In addition, this system will help all who will be reading and reviewing your documents to see all of the hard work you have accomplished.

• An e-portfolio that can be printed and collated into binders or eventually, uploaded(when the university adopts an e-portfolio system
• A table of contents and a cover sheet;
• A template that uses the departmental requirement to help you catalogue your achievements and evidences; and
• A system of organization of materials for the appendices that will guide your reviewers through the portfolio in a seamless fashion.
• They will additionally add their updated CV to their e-portfolio.
• Finally, faculty will also fill out and save their application.

One of the wonderful things about living in a technology-driven age, is the tools we have available to us to organize material. It allows us to add material easily and save on waste and time. Here is a method by which to create an e-portfolio on your computer to help you get organized.

Inside the folder, you will create a series of subfolders that say:

• Application
• Cover Page and Table of Contents
• Department Requirements
• Evaluations
• Teaching
• Research
• Service
• Letters
• Updated CV

Inside the folder marked Evaluations, create subfolders that say:

• Faculty Record Sheets
• Chair Evaluations
• Peer Evaluations
• Student Evaluations

Inside the folders marked Teaching, Research, and Service, create subfolders that say:

• Department Requirements
• Narrative
• Evidences

Depending upon your department requirements, there may be sub-categories that you will want to create within your evidence sections. For instance, under the Teaching Evidence, you may wish to create folders for sample syllabi, student work samples, curriculum leadership, student awards, etc. As you look at your guidelines in each of these three categories in your department, feel free to create subfolders that apply to your expertise and your evidence that you would like to present to make your case for promotion, tenure, or awards.

To help readers go through your document, it is essential to create a table of contents. It is recommended, when printing out the materials for your binder, that these main items contained in the document have dividers with tabs that identify the main sections. Here are the main sections for the Table of Contents:

• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Application
• Departmental Criteria
• Evaluations
• Teaching
• Research
• Service
• Letters (optional)
• Updated CV

It is really common to see faculty include letters from colleagues, students, and others in the community within their portfolio. To help you prove your case, please be very selective with your letters and make sure those letters also help prove your case.

For instance, let's take Dr. Apple. Dr. Apple asks for a letter from a colleague in their department that they worked with and the letter simply states that they are great colleague to work with. Dr. Apple also asks for a letter from another colleague and they write in-depth about Dr. Apple's work with students on research and conferences he has taken with them.

In this case, the second letter is better to include than the first.

Other considerations:

• Faculty should not include letters of support specifically written for the portfolio by other faculty or administrators who will be reviewing the portfolio, as it can create a conflict of interest.
• Faculty, however, may include a letter from a colleague who will be reviewing their portfolio if the letter is referring to a specific event. (ie. Dr. Apple received a congratulations e-mail from the Department Chair on the curriculum changes that they spearheaded through ASCC last year.)

Letters may be included in a separate section or can be incorporated in the appendices for the three areas. This can be particularly useful for faculty in the area of service where it can sometimes be difficult to show proof of work in this area.

One of the tools we can create to help organize the portfolio is a Departmental Requirements Evidence List. Each faculty member should have access to a document from their department that lists the requirements for promotion for each area.

Step 1:

Take the departmental requirement list and break it into three separate documents, teaching, research and service. Save each word document in your e-portfolio in the appropriate section. The next page will show an example from the Department of Music in Research.

Step 2:

Now what you can do with each of the three documents is add a list of items that support your case. For instance, if your department requires curriculum development and you have the evidence to support this, you will want to capture this idea on this list. On the next page, the example submitted is from Dr. Christina Placilla's portfolio for promotion to Professor from the Department of Music.

This list will give you a good idea of where you stand throughout the process leading up to the final portfolio submission and is key to ensuring you meet the guidelines.

Some Tips:

• It is very possible that not every requirement is actually required-- read the guidelines carefully. It may say something to the effect of you need 3 items in the category as it may apply to you.
• Also, make sure to clearly note the level of the item where applicable (local, state, regional, national, or international) as this may also be a requirement of the guidelines
• Consider creating sub-folders within your evidence sections of your e-portfolio for any and all items that you do meet the requirements for so you can catalogue your materials more easily.
• Finally, note in the sample on the next page that the author created a filing system within the portfolio for the evidence section dealing with research. We will consider this idea more as we progress through the sections. Consider this list a tool to create your own. In the binder format, tabs with numbers and or letters are very useful to help create these items.

As part of your portfolio, you will need to provide an updated CV. Please take some time to thoughtfully update your CV, if you have not done so already.  For help updating your CV, contact Career Services.

Now that you have gotten the framework of the basic materials required for the portfolio together, it is time to begin working on the main sections of the portfolio. This requires you to  collect and gather the evaluations of your teaching throughout your time at Winston-Salem State University and collating them.

You will be:

• Creating a section list of evaluations included
• Organizing, sorting, scanning all evaluations
  • Faculty Record Sheets
  • Chair Evaluations
  • Peer Evaluations
  • Student Evaluations (if you choose to place in this section of your portfolio.

This section will contain:

• Table of Contents for Evidences
• Evaluations, as listed above

Sorting the Evaluations:

In your e-portfolio, in the Evaluations Folder, please create subfolders for:

• Faculty Record Sheets
• Chair Evaluations
• Peer Evaluations
• Student Evaluations (if you choose to put this here)

Make sure to save your documents with the academic year noted. If you will need to create a hard-copy, when you print and place your documents within the binder, please make sure to collate them by the most recent year, to the least recent year in each section.

As this section is not as extensive as the others, it is not necessary to create additional tabs to separate the sections, as it is fairly evident to the readers what each form looks like.

If you do not have an evidence you think you should have, such as a chair evaluation, please contact your chair to see if they have copy for that year. If you did not receive a peer evaluation for a year or student evaluations in a course, this will not necessarily make or break your case. Please note, it is the faculty member's responsibility to gather peer evaluations, and if you have time, you may be able to ask a colleague or CITI to observe you teach and provide you with one.

Creating your teaching portion of your portfolio is very important. You will be thinking and writing critically and carefully about your teaching pedagogy and your educational philosophy and how it supports your departmental and university goals. You will also be creating connections between evidences and using departmental requirements to help you form your case.

This section of the portfolio will contain:

• Table of Contents
• Department Requirements Evidence List
• Narrative (if you are choosing to write a narrative for each section)
• Appendix containing the evidence samples

Please Note:  The teaching portion of the portfolio is very important, please read pp. 12-13 of the WSSU Faculty Evaluation Manual.

Now that you have created your list of points that meet the requirements for promotion and tenure, it is time to create your appendix that is specific to teaching. Using the system discussed earlier whereby we create a sub-category system, create a series of sub-folders in your e-portfolio that are related to the requirements for teaching. If you will be submitting a hard copy of your portfolio, each of these sub-folders can have a different number or letter tabbed section.

For instance, in the music example that was shared, the items that will prove that the first point was done by the professor was sample syllabi. Choose a few well-written syllabi to convey your point and place these in one folder, and later under one tab in the binder. Make sure to indicate on this list where these items can be found in the binder on your department requirement evidence list.  Do this for each of the sections and requirements that you are able to meet.

In writing narratives for the portfolio, some faculty may choose to write one narrative that addresses the three main components they are being evaluated on (teaching, research, and service) or they may choose to write three separate narratives. Either situation is fine. This module will take you through writing the teaching portion of a narrative. All three narratives can then be combined at the end of the process to create one narrative, or can serve as standalone narratives for each section. It is up to the faculty member to determine what works best for their writing style and the final product they wish to present.

If you have not already done so, please make sure to create your Department Requirement Evidence list as previously discussed in this course. You will be asked to submit your research requirement list on the next page.

Please make sure to also note what level something is at in your documentation. For instance, if you present at a National level conference, you will want that to be clear to the reviewers. See the below example from Dr. Placilla's portfolio for an idea on how this can be achieved:

1) Publications in the form of refereed articles in journals which are recognized as scholarly in content [Research: D]

• International Journal of Music and Performing Arts (International)
• Journal of the American Viola Society Article (National)
• American String Teacher Journal Article  (National)

2) Non-refereed scholarly publications [Research: E]

• We are the Music Makers Vol. I International
• We are the Music Makers Vol. II International
• We are the Music Makers Vol. III International

For this section, you will be creating your service portion of your portfolio. You will be thinking and writing critically and carefully about your service to the department, college or school, university, professional service, and community service. You will also be creating connections between evidences and using departmental requirements to help you form your case.

This section of the portfolio will contain:

• Table of Contents
• Department Requirements Evidence List
• Narrative (if you are choosing to write a narrative for each section)
• Appendix containing the evidence samples