Ideas about Maintaining a Portfolio
Begin by assuming that you will want or need a full educational portfolio someday. (A full educational portfolio will contain more materials and a broader focus than your mini-portfolio.) After you have collected materials over time for a full educational portfolio, it will be relatively easy to select the items most appropriate for a mini-portfolio to submit for a Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Faculty Excellence Award.
For more information about the educational portfolio and the mini-portfolio, open and review this PowerPoint file. You will find other useful documents at the end of this page.
Establish a file where you routinely put everything that may have potential value to your portfolio, organized by category. Be sure to include a date and brief explanation of each item as you file it so that you can reconstruct the time and setting in which it was generated. This file could be a marked section in a file-cabinet, an accordion folder, or a box. Develop the habit of filing anything that may serve as evidence of your educational accomplishments.
Review the examples for each category to get an idea of the types of documents you may want to put in your portfolio file. Remember that you will need to provide evidence of both the quality and quantity of your educational endeavors.
Actively strive to obtain and file assessments of your educational endeavors as they occur. Obtaining good evidence of quality may be a challenge in certain settings and for certain types of educational endeavors, requiring conscious effort and commitment on your part.
- In the area of Teaching and Evaluation, for example, it is important to obtain and file assessments from learners. If you teach in a required course, clerkship, or residency program (either as a lecturer or attending), these assessments may be collected for you by curriculum, course, or program leaders. If so, be sure to get a copy of your assessments from them. You should be able to get a copy from the course, clerkship, or program leader. Some assessments between 2000 and 2003 may be available in the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education.
If you teach in an elective course or program, or in a non-Baylor course (e.g., national conference) you may need to collect assessments from learners yourself. - In the area of Educational Leadership, for example, you will want to maintain a file of learners' course evaluations and performance on appropriate examinations, if you are a course director.
Actively strive to obtain and file assessments from peers about your educational endeavors as they occur. These assessments can be informal observations/feedback or formal ratings from trained educational specialists.
- Occasionally, a peer will send you feedback without being asked (e.g., congratulatory email from a colleague about a successful grand rounds). Be sure to file these unsolicited "peer reviews".
- Usually, you will have to specifically ask for such feedback. You should think about getting peer review feedback from colleagues or educational specialists who are able to comment on the quality of the content you present as well as on the quality of your work (e.g., the teaching methods you use). The Educator Peer Coaching and Review web site has some excellent suggestions about obtaining feedback from peers. Other sources for letters of recommendation concerning your educational excellence might include:
- chairs
- section chief
- course directors
As needed, seek advice about maintaining a portfolio from other faculty or from Dr. Nancy Searle, in the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education.
These tools from the Mini-Portfolio Workshops may help you get started collecting and organizing materials and writing your personal statement.
Mini-Portfolio Worksheet: This worksheet will help you think about and list your educational activities and plan how to obtain evidence of quality.
CV Hints: Here are tips about your Baylor CV, which should be included as part of your application.
Survey of Previous Recipients: This document summarizes the results of a survey of recipients of the Teaching and Evaluation Category of the award. It may have helpful hints as you think about preparing your own mini-portfolio.
Writing a Personal Statement: This brief description and reflection activity will help you get started writing your Personal Statement.
Educational Portfolio: This document contains useful information about the relationship between the full Educational Portfolio, mini-portfolio, and CV.