BPD2100 Assessment 3 Career ePortfolio Part B

Assessment Overview

The unit learning outcomes assessed are:

LO 1: Understand the skills, knowledge and attributes of a business professional in order to substantiate the design of an effective career eportfolio

LO 2: Develop professional career eportfolio (webpages) of relevant skills and experiences, Career SWOT analysis, coherent Career Plan and CV

Instructions

1. 1. Finalise several pages of evidences which provide examples and evidence of your academic, employment, co-curricular and personal experiences and what you learned from them and what skills, attitudes you developed from them. Important: Minimum one evidence must be about your Leadership Skills.
   2. Finalise one webpage containing your CV.
   3. Finalise one webpage containing your detailed Career Plan, including long term and short term career objectives which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time based (SMART). Your career plan should include a number of specific steps or actions that you could take that would help you achieve your short and long term career goals.
   4. Link the Career SWOT, Career plan and evidence webpages by creating internal and external hyperlinks throughout all webpages where applicable.

Assessment Structure

An increasing trend in the employment market is the use of social media and networking to connect interested employment candidates with potential employers. Internet based networking sites such as ‘Linked-In’, ‘on-line video resumes’, and ‘personal websites’ are some methods that are currently being used to showcase and publicly communicate the capabilities and interests of people in the employment market. Another example of electronic media that is used to potentially showcase a person’s interests, skills, abilities and potential for a chosen profession or field is ePortfolio presentation.

The Career ePortfolio is a collection of evidence that documents and displays your academic, employment, co-curricula and personal experience, interests and capabilities. It is an evolving portfolio of information that you can continue to develop and update over the course of your studies and beyond. You can also create & use different ePortfolios for different purposes (e.g. ePortfolio presentation for applying for different types of jobs highlighting different skills or abilities; ePortfolio presentation of achievements; ePortfolio presentation of learning experiences etc.).

For this assessment, you are required to individually develop Career ePortfolio webpages in My ePortfolio platform through VUC space.   

The purpose of this activity is to:

• Encourage you to reflect on your academic learning, life experience, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths in relation to your future career prospects and choice(s);
• Document and evidence the learning, skills and experiences that best represents who you are and what you can do;
• Develop comprehensive Career SWOT Analysis and Career Plan that will assist students in their future personal and professional growth; 
• It is strongly recommended you review the guidelines and examples at Penn State <http://portfolio.psu.edu/> or other sites you can find via your own searches, which provide useful ideas for what could be included in your ePortfolio presentation and how it might be structured.

Assessment Structure and Requirements

You will develop Career ePortfolio presentation to support your application for your first career step following graduation from your current study (Use actual realistic detail to date of your studies, skill sets, work experience, and personal achievements). Remember your audience are potential employers and professional connections – not necessarily your facebook friends or even your teachers. So choose examples and photos that are more likely to catch the attention of employers / professional connections. Then try to be specific and focus on what potential employers and professional connections might want to read about you, what you have done and learned, who you are and what you can do (your attitudes, skills, abilities and personal strengths), and what you would like to do (career and life goals). In a better Career ePortfolio’s presentations people do not just describe what they have done, but explain how they have developed their skills and attitudes in the process and use evidence (photos, documents, other media) to provide a clear picture of who they are and what they can do and what they aspire to.

You have a great deal of creative freedom to structure your Career ePortfolio presentation must at least contain a number of pages which cover the following areas as a minimum.

• A “professional looking” introductory page with a well-chosen photo and some introductory information about you and your career aspirations. Your aim in creating this page is to make a potential employer want to click on your other pages to find out more about you.
• Several pages which provide examples and evidence of your academic, employment, co-curricular and personal experiences and what you learned from them and what skills, attitudes you developed from them. Important: Minimum one evidence must be about your Leadership Skills
• One page containing your personal career SWOT analysis.
• One page containing your CV
• One page containing your detailed Career Plan, including long term and short term career objectives which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time based (SMART). Your career plan should include a number of specific steps or actions that you could take that would help you achieve your short and long term career goals.

Note that even if you provide access to your SWOT analysis and/or your Career Plan and/or your CV on a Word or PDF file, the contents MUST still be copied, pasted and formatted as a page of your Career ePortfolio presentation as well, as downloading these documents is inconvenient and may take too long for users, including potential employers.

As a minimum your Career ePortfolio presentation must contain at least 8 examples or evidence relating to your past and present experiences, with an appropriate mix of academic, co-curricula, employment, and personal examples. IMPORTANT: One out of eight examples of evidence must be about your Leadership Skills. (Note that a good ePortfolio presentation would be expected to have several examples within each category. Depending on your individual experiences and preferences you may have fewer examples in one category and more in others).

Click on each of the below to explore the examples.

You should always explain how photographs or other evidence relate to your personal or professional development, career or life goals or interests. Many students find it useful to use the STAR method (Situation – Task – Activity – Result) to help them analyse and describe the impact of their experiences.

You should remember the audience is a POTENTIAL EMPLOYER – NOT your Facebook friends or even your lecturer. Your presentation and expression should be tailored accordingly!

Career SWOT Analysis

Your Career SWOT analysis should be on a page of your ePortfolio presentation (NOT a downloadable file) and should carefully identify and present your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in relation to your future career choices, as well as providing a list of Actions to incorporate in my career plan based on your SWOT analysis:

The list of specific actions to incorporate in your career plan should be in two parts:

• Actions to build on your strengths and exploit opportunities;
• Actions to address your weaknesses and respond to and minimise the impact of potential threats.

The strengths you list in your Career SWOT analysis should be highlighted and supported with evidence in your ePortfolio pages. Your list of actions should be used to inform the development of your career plan.

Career Plan

Your career plan should be on a page of your ePortfolio presentation (NOT a downloadable file) and show your short and long term career goals and life goals, as well as providing a career plan showing specific objectives in relation to the steps you could take to help you to get to where you would like to be. It should provide a plan of relevant actions that clearly connect to and compliment your career direction. These goals and activities should be achievement-oriented and outcome-focussed and meet the SMART criteria. 

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Your CV should be on a page of your ePortfolio presentation (NOT a downloadable file) and should be based on a recognised acceptable format from ‘VU Collaborate’ or Career websites and should be the equivalent of two A4 pages.

CVs should be the equivalent of two-three A4 pages and are to be professionally presented, current and relevant to the chosen industry or profession of interest. It is strongly recommended that students seek additional feedback and advice relating to the development of their CV from sources outside of the classroom – for example VU Careers Unit, VU Work Integrated Learning (if enrolled for placement), or personal industry sources and connections. Refer to links & information in ‘VU Collaborate’ – week 3 for advice on how to do a CV.

Your CV must contain the full URL address for My ePortfolio presentation. 

A final note:

Your ePortfolio presentation, CV and career plan should be strategic and should be informed by your career SWOT analysis: Your CV and the examples of evidence in your ePortfolio presentation should clearly demonstrate your desire to achieve your goals and should complement your career direction as indicated in your career plan

Assessment Criteria and Submission 

Assessment Criteria:

Note: Due to privacy reasons and submissions requirements, all students are expected to use ‘My ePortfolio’ platform available through MyVU Portal for this assignment. Use of alternative platforms to ‘My ePortfolio’ is not permitted. 

Click here to access the full marking criteria for Assessment 3 - Career ePortfolio (Part B)Submission details:

Important: Submit exactly the same Career ePortfolio as in the PART A, however, this Career ePortfolio assignment will consists of all finalised webpages as per the assessment task.

In accordance with the College of Business guidelines you must submit your Career ePortfolio assignment through ‘VU Collaborate’ - Assessment Dropbox’: ‘Assessment 3 - Career ePortfolio (Part B)’, as per the steps below:

• Click on ‘Assessments’/’Assessment Dropbox’ 
• Click ‘Assignment 3: Career ePortfolio’
  • Read the Declaration
• Click ‘Add a File’
• Click ‘ePortfolio’ (from the pop-up screen)
• Tick your ‘ePortfolio Item’
• Click ‘Select Item’
• Click ‘Submit’
• Click ‘Done’

Click > Assessment 3 - Career ePortfolio (Part B) to submit your completed assessment 3 via the dropbox or via the main menu, Assessments > Drop Box.