Mentoring Professional Identity Development through Media Assignments

Online portfolios are educational requirements used to encourage self-reflection and to assess competency in various disciplines. These ePortfolios focus on student selfpresentation without emphasizing the social construction of self and the opportunities that online spaces provide to enact an authentic professional public persona. Structured appropriately, online portfolios afford an opportunity for faculty to mentor students in effective impression management throughout their careers by strategically sharing high-quality multimedia texts that meet audience needs and expectations. Students need guidance in analyzing online environments and producing effective messages. This paper relates how the professional identity development potential of ePortfolios have been explored in three case studies: (1) a graduate digital analytics course, (2) an undergraduate public speaking course, and (3) an undergraduate travel course. Mentors and teachers are offered frameworks that encourage robust articulations of self and more advanced impression management skills in public online portfolios. These approaches can be employed across the curriculum in senior capstone courses or as ongoing projects that scaffold evolving student identities throughout their college development.