Medallion ePortfolio

Your Medallion ePortfolio helps you reflect on your global learning experiences. It is also an online home for your global learning knowledge, skills, and accomplishments, viewable by potential employers, graduate schools, and other networks. For example, you can include a link to your resume or to LinkedIn.

Portfolio due dates

The ePortfolio is due the semester of your graduation from the university.
A specific due date will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
You should start your ePortfolio immediately so that you can record your thoughts, feelings, photos, videos, and papers as you go.

Adding onto an existing portfolio, blog or website

If you already have a personal website, your ePortfolio can be included there. However, you must follow the guidelines described below.

Steps

Step 1: Choose your audience
Are you showing this to employers or family? The choice is yours.
We think it is a good idea to create a site that can be used for professional purposes and/or the graduate school recruitment and application process. You can also create a fun portfolio to show off to friends and family.
Showcasing to employers
Start with a brief and targeted description of your employable skills. This is an effective strategy for communicating with potential employers. Use appropriate photos and avoid informal or casual language.
Showcasing to friends and family
If you want to, produce a fun site that is strictly for your friends and family.
Step 2: Choose your platform
Choose a customizable site or a site with preset formatting for presentation.
Customize your own site
You may choose to use any free website builder for your ePortfolio. These platforms are highly customizable and provide many creative options to control the look and feel of your ePortfolio. Some popular choices are WordPress, Wix, and Weebly.
If you choose a builder that allows you to control the design, you should include headers for each section. Consider these examples:
Step 3: Document your experience
The following items should be found on your website once it is turned in for review.
Photos and descriptions of all 5-point experiences
- These usually include your club leadership, service trips, and volunteering.
Discussion of select, significant 1-point experiences
- You may have gone to Tuesday Times Roundtables, film screenings, and events of that nature. It would be mundane to include all of them, but highlighting two or three events that made a significant impact on you provides a more complete picture of your Medallion experience and your commitment to learning outside of the classroom.
Global Learning course experiences
- It should be clear on your site that you took global learning courses. Focus on specific assignments that had a real impact on your global learning. Upload high quality samples of your work, such as research papers and PowerPoint presentations. You may also tell a story about something you learned in a class which shaped your global perspective or engagement.
Capstone experience
- Include details of your research project, internship, fellowship, study abroad, or language study, by uploading artifacts, photos, work products, videos, and commentary.
Step 4: Reflect on your experience
Creating your Medallion Reflection will help you make meaning of your global learning experiences. You must have a separate, stand-alone Reflection page.
Address each of the following three prompts:
Global Perspective: The ability to consider others’ unexamined assumptions, conceptions, and beliefs when faced with a complex problem.
Global Awareness: Understanding local and global issues and how they are interconnected.
Global Engagement: Willingness to engage in local, global, international, and intercultural problem solving.
Additionally, detail how these experiences will play a role in personal, academic, and/or professional plans post-graduation. This should be a call to action for yourself.
Reflection example
Your reflection should be specific and integrate the various Global Learning Medallion experiences that you presented on your other ePortfolio pages. Read this reflection from a past student as an example.
Resources
Name specific skills you gained or improved. Do you feel highly competent in one or more? Explain how in your reflection.
Step 5: Market yourself
Set yourself apart through your resume, interests, passions and marketable skills.
- Include a resume, formatted for the web. Your resume can make or break opportunities, so it should be flawless. Please review our resume advice. Sign up for a resume critique via FIU Handshake.
- Include contact information. We recommend using a webform where individuals can contact you without your actual contact information being posted. You can choose to post your contact information but please consider the privacy implications that may come with that.
- Be descriptive. Include your interests, passions, marketable skills, and any valuable experiences not directly related to the Global Learning Medallion.
Step 6: Review these important considerations
Make sure you correctly name your degree.
- The name of your degree usually consists of this formula:[Level of Degree] of [Arts/Sciences/etc.] in [Major]. Consider these examples
  - Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice
  - Bachelor of Business Administration in Human Resource Management
  - Master of Arts in English
- Almost all FIU degrees are a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science with a few exceptions, such as Bachelor of Business Administration. If you are not sure of the formal name of your degree, consult your academic department’s web site or FIU Degrees & Programs.
- Bachelor and Master are singular when naming the whole degree “Bachelor of Arts,” but possessive when using the short form “Bachelor’s degree.”
Finally, active voice puts you at the center of the story and gets more directly to the point. Go over the prose narrative you have included throughout your ePortfolio to identify unnecessary use of passive voice that can be edited.
Learn more about using active voice at Purdue Owl.