Curation Basics
Every candidate will have a resume and cover letter, but not every candidate will have a self-designed website.
The first step to curation is determining the content you want your visitors to see. What Maine Core Competencies will be less apparent when an employer looks at your transcript, resume, and cover letter? Use the Maine Nursing Core Competencies to guide you as you curate but also to guide your visitors to the content that will give you an edge over other recent grads.
Students have reported that in interviews, they often get asked three questions:
- What is your five-year plan?
- How do you relate to your colleagues?
- How do you relate to your patients?
What content highlights these skills for you?
Why curate?
The act of curation has more to do with your assessment and understanding of your skills than it does with a finished ePortfolio. A curated ePortfolio can be an asset, so even if you don’t expect to share it, design the site to be functional and understandable for any visitor, not just someone from UNE.
Photo by Flash Dantz on Unsplash
Maybe you have no plan to share your site, so you think it is not worth investing time to curate. The act of curation has more to do with your assessment and understanding of your skills than it does with a finished ePortfolio. You have learned A LOT through your course work and experiences. This is an opportunity to take stock in the skills and knowledge that you think are most important — to you and future employers. That takes some thought. It may take more thought than creating a resume or writing a cover letter, but it should inform your cover letter. Consider adding your ePortfolio URL to your resume or referring to it in your cover letter. Every candidate will have a resume and cover letter, but not every candidate will have a self-designed website.
Steps to Curation
- Determine the most important content for YOUR goals. Add content if you want, or change content to “draft” if you don’t want it to be accessible.
- Set your visibility settings to enable Search Engines to see your site by making it public.
- Use your categories to connect content across your experience. For example, the MNCC Communication can be shown in a variety of ways: from specific patient experiences where you communicated information or where you communicated your patient-centered care by providing comfort or conversation. Communication includes multiple forms: speaking, writing, presenting, designing for a specific audience. Do you have multimodal work that demonstrates you are versed in 21st century communication methods?
- Redesign your menu to organize based on your most important content. Add categories or specific posts or pages to your menu. Rename course pages to their topic rather than a course number if you plan to leave them on the menu.
Customizing
Consider using featured content to highlight two or three experiences. You can add a category called “Featured Posts” and apply it to three or four posts. Notice that Ashe them offers video tutorials to guide you with customizations.
Make an appointment for ePortfolio curation at SASC if you would like some help with any part of the process! Or browse the UNE Portfolio site for resources.
Some Approaches to Curation
Some students spend considerable time curating while others use a “light” touch. Here are some recent Nursing grads’ approaches. Notice the information they kept visible on the site and what navigational paths they set for visitors: menu, categories and recent post visible (or not), and featured content.
