What's the Value of a Portfolio for a Design Educator?
In short: A portfolio for a Service Design educator isn't just for job applications. It helps rediscover and reuse valuable teaching material. But to make this true, some review habits can help.
The portfolio is a good review tool too
I'm applying for a fixed position within the Master Service Design of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Part of the process required me to share a portfolio showcasing my Service Design Educational work.
This forced me to go back into my archives to find old teaching materials, student feedback, or course photos. It was interesting to see how much content I had created over the years. But more important: I realized that much of this material could be reused or updated for different audiences instead of starting from scratch each time.
Tips to make better use of an educator portfolio
Here are a few tips that I'm giving to myself to ensure this practice of rediscovering past work happens more:
- Better archiving: I want to get better at taking photos during courses, and better archive my course material all in one place so that it's easier to review it.
- Portfolio update: I want to take the time to update my portfolio more often, not just every 5-10 years when I change job.
- New routines: I want to have better routines like an end of course routine where I create the mini case study and put everything in an archive on my computer. Or having an end of semester review where I review all the courses, talks and workshops I've done in all institutions.
The goal of all of this is to become better at re-using learnings and parts of courses that worked well from the many places where I teach and do workshops. Instead of re-inventing the wheel.
This article is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand. The whole section about tips was rewritten by hand as the AI got way too wordy.
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