Marketing Portfolio week 1-12

A portfolio assessment is “a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress and achievements in one or more areas.” (Paulson, Paulson, Meyer 1991).

It is a form of authentic assessment that contains samples of the learner’s work (called artefacts) and shows growth in learning over time. In building a portfolio, learners begin to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own work (self-assessment). As expected, in this form of assessment, it is the quality that counts, not the quantity.

Think of your portfolio as both a product and a process.

As a product, it holds the artefacts you have surfaced during the course and represents an edited collection of your learning in the subject.

As a process-oriented tool, it enables you to monitor your own learning systematically, reflect on your concepts, present a coherent account of your knowledge (both existing and newly acquired) and obtain feedback on your learning.

What you need to do:

Review the main concepts covered each week and create a checklist of key topics that you think are most important. This does not mean you should list everything from a week’s content – rather your task is to distil the most important concepts for each week based on lecture content, class discussions, text readings and examples.

Then, comb through your favourite online and offline magazines, newspapers, channels, blogs, websites, etc for advertisements that illustrate each key concept you have identified. Screenshot the ad you select to support each concept and enter it into your portfolio with a reflective note justifying your selection. Be sure to appropriately attribute each artefact to its source and provide a link to the source.

Note here the keyword “reflection” as well as the difference between explanation and justification. Your task is to reflect on the why and how. Don’t just explain what you did. You need to provide a justification of why you chose this artefact and how this illustrates the concept you have identified.

Your reflective note that accompanies each artefact should:

develop a perspective or line of reasoning

develop a link between your experience or practice and existing knowledge (theoretical or

personal)

show understanding and appreciation of different perspectives to your own

show recognition that your own understanding is likely not be complete and situations are

rarely clear-cut and simplistic

show learning resulting from the reflection (either by discovering something new or

confirming existing knowledge) and how you plan to use it

be written in an appropriate style with language relevant to your academic discipline

use theoretical literature to inform your understanding. (University of Edinburgh, 2019)

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How to do this well:

Naturally, this requires you to thoroughly understand the concept and then integrate theory with practice.

The difference in grade between two students who may have chosen the identical ad for illustrating a concept will be the clarity, integration, creativity and overall impact with which the accompanying note justifies the concept. Refer to the many ads we will watch together to illustrate various concepts in the course and use this as inspiration and guidance in developing your portfolio.

Be sure to collect a wide variety of ads (print ads, television ads, digital banner ads, social media ads, etc). The more diversity you have in your portfolio the better. For this, you will need to look through several sources. At the end of the semester, submit a portfolio of ads and your notes that illustrate the main concepts in the course.

Start early in the semester. The best practice is to work on curating and developing your portfolio artefacts regularly and consistently. Do not leave this to the last part of the semester. It is highly likely that you will run out of time and submit poor quality work.

Make a plan for how you will build your portfolio. Try and allocate some time each week to review the content of the week, extract and grasp the key concepts, seek input, clarification and feedback if required and collect your artefacts regularly. You should also try to write your reflective notes alongside each artefact regularly.

The submission:

You are free to use any software you are comfortable with to assimilate and build your portfolio. You may use MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Google Docs and the Google Suite, Apple iLife Suite, or any other software you prefer to format and produce your portfolio.

Your final portfolio must:

be submitted via the link on iLearn in PDF format only to ensure it is presented as you intend for it to be viewed;

have a cover page, table of contents and clear page numbers;

be no more than 12 pages (all inclusive). This page limit is provided for you to write

succinctly and pitch high quality arguments that will persuade. You will lose marks for rambling and adding frivolous sections to your portfolio. Anything beyond 12 pages will not be considered for marking;

The layout and presentation of your portfolio is entirely up to you.

Be sure to check out the grading rubric in iLearn for further guidance on what specific aspects you

should pay careful attention to.