Using Professional Online Portfolios to Enhance Student Transition Into the Poststudent World

Abstract

Although most students have learned to succeed academically, by the time they enter our business communication courses, their time as students is almost over. This article describes the challenges facing “students who will soon stop being students” and introduces the professional online portfolio as a project which enables them to develop the confidence, the capacity, and a concrete platform with which to communicate with the world outside the black box of school.

Employer Perspectives on Virtual International Working

“…Underserved populations benefit from technology-enabled interactive intercultural communication activities. Zielezinski and Darling-Hammond (2016) Watson & Watson (2011) to support that point. By use of face-to-face or digitally mediated real-time communication with someone from another culture or country, these populations are exposed to opportunities for critical thinking, analysis of complex content, and examination of how their own perception of identity connects to those who have seemed "different" from their own.…”

Teaching Workplace Genre Ecologies and Pedagogical Goals Through Résumés and Cover Letters

“…This research is situated within the BPC service course, the introductory course taught as a service to other programs or departments (Melonçon & England, 2011) and enrolled primarily by nonmajor students most likely taking their final writing course (Watson, 2019). BPC research could better interrogate how instructors act as gatekeepers to students' professional careers through teaching and assessing résumés and cover letters (Fillenwarth et al, 2018).…”

“…The résumé and cover letter assignment has long been a cornerstone of BPC because it legitimizes industry knowledge, particularly when students are asked to link their employment application assignments to activities such as writing reports about their potential workplaces or gathering two résumés from their own field. As job seekers, many students now need an online presence (Watson, 2019). Students require direct instruction about how to create and curate their online personas when seeking a job, particularly in ways that do not reproduce or exacerbate current inequalities of race (Shelton, 2020), gender (Moore, 2019), and class (Randazzo, 2020).…”

“…The formal elements of résumés and cover letters have remained relatively stable since the 1980s (McDowell, 1987), changing little when transitioning to electronic media (Baker et al, 1998;Hutchinson & Brefka, 1997). However, the social contexts surrounding résumés and cover letters have changed immensely (Randazzo, 2019a); now, students develop their own personal brands (Watson, 2019), network online via LinkedIn (Moore, 2019), and navigate applicant tracking systems (ATS). During the 2010s, several studies considered how instructors have taught within classrooms at their own universities, providing implications about where students find résumé-writing advice (Randazzo, 2016), how to design an effective résumé (Diaz, 2013), and how to engage students with additional writing and research about their future careers (Fillenwarth et al, 2018;Randazzo, 2012).…”

Innovative design and delivery of the business capstone course

“…For a number of years students have been encouraged to retain their individual and team work products as portfolio items; the portfolio process is one with which students are likely familiar from many other subject areas, and for which value has been documented widely (Feldhaus, 2002; Flanigan, 2012; Watson, 2019). Their website or social profile portfolio is easily designed to demonstrate their skills in research, critical thinking/analysis, strategic thinking, decision making, teamwork, project management, oral communication, and written communication, based on projects in the capstone course and in courses prior.…”