Testing Guide for Showcase Portfolios

[#1]

Test Guide - Showcase Portfolios (Student-owned)

This guide walks you through the creation and customization of Showcase Portfolios—personal, flexible spaces for student to tell their academic, professional, or personal stories.

Portfolio Creation

For Students

1. Start a new Showcase Portfolio.

   • Navigate to Portfolios from the global navigation bar.

   • Click Create Portfolio.

2. Customize your portfolio.

   • Add a title that reflects your story or theme.

   • Upload a cover image to personalize your portfolio.

   • Write a description to introduce yourself or explain the purpose of the portfolio.

3. Add evidence to tell your story.

   1. You can include Canvas Assignments from your Canvas courses

   2. Create new evidence from scratch (projects, extracurricular activity, professional experience) and include:

      • Title: Give each piece of evidence a clear and meaningful title to help contextualize your work.

      • Text entries: Write essays, project summaries, or detailed descriptions of your work.

      • Tags: Add tags to highlight key skills, themes, or areas of focus (e.g., Critical Thinking, Research, UI Design).

      • Reflections: Share insights about your learning journey, personal growth, or skill development.

      • Uploaded files and media: Include images, PDFs, audio, and video files (each up to 25MB).

4. Organize your content with sections.

   • Create sections to group related evidence (e.g., “Academic Work,” “Professional Projects,” “Leadership & Activities”).

     • You can structure your sections by theme, timeline, or personal relevance.

5. Review and refine.

   • Review the flow of your portfolio.

   • Ensure your story is clear and visually engaging.

   • Edit or rearrange sections as needed for coherence.

[alexjeancharles]

In number "3. Add evidence to tell your story," section "2. Create new evidence," is it possible 'Reflections' be separated from the 'Uploaded evidence'?
My institution wants students to upload evidence (docx, PDFs, audio, and video) and enter a text entry reflecting on the uploaded evidence.

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @alexjeancharles,

yes, that’s exactly what the portfolio is designed to support!

Learners can absolutely add reflections to an evidence entry (like a project). While reflections aren’t technically tied to the uploaded file itself, learners can use the rich content editor (RCE) in the reflection area to clearly reference the evidence — for example:
“Reflecting on the uploaded evidence titled ‘Final Research Project,’ here’s what I learned...”

This gives them plenty of flexibility to add thoughtful, structured reflections alongside any type of uploaded media (docs, PDFs, audio, video, etc.).

So yes, your use case is well supported — students can upload evidence and include rich, personalized reflections that give context to their work.

[JessRoseJohn]

Hello, 

So, I am testing out the Showcase Portfolio and one issue came up and one question. 

Issue: I uploaded PDFs for the "created evidence" and anytime I try to open them, I get an error message. 

Question: It looks like when you add an assignment from a course, you don't get to write a description, or reflection, or put tags for that. Why is that?

Thanks,

Jessica O'Brien

[Dalma_Schnell]

Hi @JessRoseJohn,

Thanks so much for highlighting this issue for us! If you could send a screenshot of the error you received when opening the PDFs, that will help me determine what might be causing the problem on your end.

Regarding your question about assignments: we’re actively working to evolve assignments so that this limitation no longer occurs. Stay tuned for updates soon!

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention!

Dalma

[Rebelnz]

I have been unable to Add Assignments from Canvas submissions - using a learner who has assignments that displayed in old version of Portfolio. Have created a ticket.