Portfolio - Application Into Practice
- Record your professional development goals and your progress throughout the Graduate Certificate in Human Resources Management program.
- Reflect on your goals, how to apply what you’re learning, and how what you’re learning contributes to those goals.
- Meet with your advisor to discuss and evaluate your progress.
Description
Enrollment in the portfolio signifies your enrollment in the Graduate Certificate in Human Resources Management program and is the capstone activity for successful completion of the program. You will be assigned a portfolio advisor, who will work you to ensure that you complete the portfolio successfully. Your advisor will schedule a series of 3 one-on-one video meetings with you (via Skype). In addition to these one-on-one meetings, you’ll have email access to your advisor throughout the learning experience.
Advisor Meeting #1
At the beginning of your program, you’ll work with your advisor to establish and refine a set of learning goals associated with the program, which you’ll record in your journal. These will exist as a frame of reference for your portfolio as a whole and establish criteria for evaluating your portfolio. As part of this process, you’ll answer questions in the following areas:
- Self-assessment: your strengths and weaknesses, and what others perceive them to be; performance indications of these; and key current or future work challenges you face that will require you to develop new competencies.
- Goals: your career aspirations; your short-term and long-term career goals; what you hope (plan) to achieve through this program, and why; and what you want to be able to do or to do better.
- Action Plan: defining how you will achieve each of your goals, what methods you will use to make progress toward your learning goals, your schedule for working on your goals, and a realistic deadline for program completion; determining the resources (equipment, information, etc.) you’ll need as you work toward these goals; identifying what assistance you’ll need from others (coworkers, family, friends) to help you overcome challenges and succeed, and how to secure this support.
- Progress: determining how you will monitor your progress toward your goals, and how you will receive feedback about your progress; identifying how you will know whether you’ve been successful in meeting your goals, and what will be different.
Advisor Meeting #2
At mid-program, your advisor will check in with you to ensure that you remain on track for successful completion and to address any issues or concerns you have with the program.
Advisor Meeting #3
During the third meeting, before you submit your portfolio, you and your advisor will make sure that your portfolio is complete.
Using the portfolio for reflection
Reflection is a deliberate process in which we think about an issue or event in order to gain insights and inform future strategies or plans. Reflection has long been acknowledged as essential to learning and to professional development: through reflection, we can become active in our learning, connect new information to our personal needs and experiences, generate meaningful insights, evaluate our progress, and develop strategies to manage the learning process. However, we often fail to adequately reflect on our experiences as we move on to the next thing competing for our time and attention. Thus, we’ve designed this journal project as a tool to help you engage in deep and deliberate reflection after each learning experience in the program.
Using the portfolio in conjunction with your course work.
You’ll also use the journal throughout the program to document how it addresses your learning goals and how you can apply your learning to your professional circumstances. You’ll document major insights you’ve developed and the program’s contributions to your professional development, as well as how you’ll implement what you’ve learned, any obstacles you face in doing so, and the resources you’ll need to overcome them.
Your portfolio advisor will use your action plan to provide targeted guidance and coaching throughout, and you will use it to develop a plan for applying what you’ve learned once you’ve completed the program. You’ll revisit your plan at the end of the program to evaluate your progress.
Using the portfolio at program completion.
You’ll use the portfolio to record your reflections on your experience in the program.
- General Questions: You’ll identify the key themes that tie together the different parts of this program, the new insights you’ve gained from the curriculum, the three most important things you’ve learned from the program, and any unanswered questions you may have.
- Action Planning: You’ll identify how the program has contributed to your professional development, and the extent to which you’ve met the goals you set at the beginning of the program; as well as how and when you will implement the lessons you’ve learned from this program. You’ll also identify the results you expect, how they will be measured, and when you expect to see these results, as well as any factors that may prevent you from implementing what you have learned, and the resources, assistance, or support you will need to overcome these obstacles.
When you’ve finished the graduate certificate curriculum course work, you’ll submit your portfolio to your portfolio advisor for evaluation and feedback. The letter grade your advisor assigns to your portfolio will be combined with the grades you receive for each of the assignments associated with the long course to determine your final grade for the graduate certificate. Furthermore, your work with your advisor on the journal will result in a valuable course takeaway you can refer to at any time during the program, as well as after your work in the program is complete.
