What is a portfolio?
A class portfolio documents the knowledge and skills you acquired during the class. Your portfolio can include
- written documents,
- sketches,
- CAD drawings,
- photographs or videos of your work, and
- artifacts you have made.
How will creating a portfolio benefit you?
- helps you understand and evaluate what you have learned.
- helps you show others what you have learned.
Creating your portfolio for Rapid Design
For Rapid Design, your portfolio can document what you have learned in the following areas
- design process – concept and execution
- communication – documentation, presentations, discussions and posters
- problem solving
- team work
- giving and receiving critique
- knowledge about rapid prototyping technologies
- new skills
To get started, you can organize your assignments in a notebook or a cardboard box. However, the assignments show what you did, not what you learned. I would like you to think about how you can document what you learned. One way is to write an essay. Another way is to show the evolution of your ideas. You might want to document how your ideas for your final project evolved, what you learned from building the prototypes, what you learned from your classmates, etc.
Your portfolio can be a private web page that you share with me; it can be a WordPress page in the class space; it can be a notebook; it can be a box full of objects that includes documentation of your learning; or it can be a video, animation or computer code that documents your learning. Your reflections on what you learned and how you learned it are more important than the format of your portfolio.
Your portfolio is due on the last day of class.