Analyzing Former Student Portfolios

Analyzing and Evaluating 

The student portfolio is an essential piece of the curriculum in this course.  It will serve as the brand for your creativity and work-ethic. Before you can be expected to design and maintain a professional portfolio site, we need to take the time to analyze and evaluate the vast collection of student websites that are displayed on our official DRHSART site. 

This activity is meant to have you collaborate and discuss with your peers the nuances of what makes one student website more professional than another.  This 40 minute activity should give each of you plenty of inspiration and information to  better design your own portfolio site.
 

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Step One:  Analyze The Big Picture

First, get into your pre-assigned groups.  Once settled, I would like you each look at the student portfolio  page.  Take ten minutes to look at how it is arranged, and click through some of the portfolios on your own. When you are prompted to stop, I'd like you to get with your group and discuss the following questions:

What did you notice about how the student portfolio page was designed?  

What trends or consistent patterns emerged as you navigated the various student portfolio sites?

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Step Two:  Critical Measures and Rank

As a group, take 20 minutes to navigate the websites that stand out to you.  I'd like your group to design your own ranking criteria, and evaluate those top websites that seem to stand out above the others.  Choose a "Top 5" list of sites, and make a list of at least five critical measures by which you can rank those sites. After you have your critical measures, I want your group to rank order these 5 websites in order of how they meet your measures.  

After the 20 minute timer sounds, we will share the results through informal presentations.  During these presentations,, your group will share the critical measures used to rank your "Top 5" student sites. 

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Step Three:  Design Your Portfolio

After our discussion of which sites were ranked highest among the class groups, it is time to design your own portfolio site.  Some of you have created your sites last year, and some of you have not.  Those of you who have a site from the past should update and consider re-designing the site based on the critical measures discussed by the groups today. Because you are only in the beginning of Art 3, it is not expected that your website be as full of rich content as those site you ranked today. Designing a solid foundation for the content you will be adding this year is what this assignment is all about.  It's so much easier to start with a great design and add content, than it is to poorly design a site, and have to re-design it and everything it contains.

​You will have the rest of this class to work on your portfolio design, but this is the only class period we will dedicate to this task before it your site will be evaluated by me in one week. Your homework is to complete it by then. 

Assessment Rubric for Online Portfolio