Reflection

CREATING AN E-PORTFOLIO

The process of creating an ePortfolio can be compared to a hike with 2000 meters of height. A smooth start in beautiful lively environment with a slight ascent followed by a moderate ascent with the daunting peak in sight still a long way off. Climbing the summit in record time was strenuous and required a lot of physical and mental effort. The reward is a beautiful view of the conquered path and a feeling of pride in what has been achieved.

Creating this ePortolio has triggered many learning processes. Through working with different tools new knowledge could be acquired. The experience gained while using the tools and the difficulties and hurdles that had to be overcome will be reflected in the following on the basis of the most important milestones.

The beginning

EXCITEMENT & CLUELESSNESS

When I was given the task of creating an ePortfolio I had no clue what an ePortfolio was, what it contained not to mention how to create a website. Although I was told what challenges lay ahead of me I could not get the gist of the project.

Getting started

FIRST STEPS

With a task this far-reaching the first decision to make was where to start. I chose the “business before pleasure” approach. As for me the academic part is the most difficult and also least enjoyable part of the ePortfolio, I started off with the four scientific reflections.

The website

ASTONSIHMENT & JOY

As soon as the academic part was done I was spoilt for choice: Which website provider should I use? Quick decision making was key to save time: Instead of giving each website provider a go I collected first-hand feedback from colleagues which provider they preferred. As Wix offered a wider range of diverse designs and templates and more widgets than Jimdo I opted for Wix.

Personal value

REALISATION

Building the website has made me see the added value in the whole task of creating the ePortfolio. From then on, I no longer simply wanted to complete the task, but saw the value that the website could have for me and my future career. Hence, the website was the real motivator for the upcoming creative tasks.

The creative tasks

AMAZING HELPERS

After creating the website with Wix, I enjoyed the creative tasks the most. It was impressive to see how many free tools exist to visualise ideas. Here recommendations regarding different tools from colleagues were extremely helpful.

Working with different tools

I really enjoyed building my website with Wix. Wix offers 500+ free modern and attractive design templates. Editing and customizing the templates to your heart’s content is intuitive and simple. In order to choose a structure for my site I got inspiration from existing websites and ePortfolios. In the end I combined elements of different templates. I was aware that the structure of the website is crucial both for usability and findability. I opted for a modern scrolling website that translates well to mobile devices. With the popularity of social media, infinite scrolling has become a must-have feature for discovery interfaces. To prevent scrolling websites' common problem of disorientation I decided for a simple navigation with a sticky menu that shows the current location and that remains on screen in a consistent location at all times.

Wix has a user-friendly interface. It is simple enough to let you build a site in relatively short time, but sophisticated enough to keep up with your ambitions. You can even launch an online store and connect PayPal as a payment provider without knowledge in coding – as long as you don’t have Amazon-sized ambitions. What further impressed me is how easy it is to embed photos, images, videos and documents available for download. Being a perfectionist with a passion for design I got carried away from time to time trying different layouts before deciding for a final design. The cost: Few hours of sleep but in return joy in building the website.

Time delays occurred when using special features such as mouseovers but also when trying to make the website responsive for mobile devices. This is what I struggled with the most. In the end, unfortunately I did not manage to make all pages responsive. This is where I will need further help to be able to use my website in the future.

Further tools

JOOMAG

I wanted to create an authentic-looking magazine dossier for the innovative Airbnb concept, so I was looking for an online publishing platform. After a long search I came across Joomag. Joomag is an online service that allows you to create and publish digital content such as online magazines, e-books, catalogues, brochures and other digital content. Joomag offers a 14-day free version that allows you to upload PDF files, create links, and insert images, sound, and even videos inside a digital magazine. The service offers the following benefits: a comprehensive set of templates and layouts, the possibility to copy and paste from different templates and a wide range of beautiful stock photos free to use. As the handling resembles InDesign it takes some time to get started if you have never worked with InDesign before, which was the case for me. However, the reward is a professional looking magazine. Having created the magazine I had to overcome another hurdle: Embedding my magazine in my Wix website.

YUMPU

After hours of searching I was delighted and relieved to find Yumpu. I had invested quite some time creating my magazine so I wanted to embed it in the website in form of a digital flipbook. Flipbooks are the most popular way to display magazine content online. Wix only offered the option of displaying single-paged PDFs which didn’t meet my needs. Typical for magazines I had used images spreading across two pages on almost every page. Yumpu is another free publishing service that gives you the possibility to embed online publications anywhere (website, blog, web shop, social media). Hence, with Yumpu I was able to make a responsive flipbook automatically from my PDF version of the magazine for free. To publish the flipbook on my website all I had to do was to put the embed code on my site. No further technical expertise was necessary. Once the flipbook is on the website you can choose the colour of the flipbook. Later I realised that I could have used Yumpu also to create the actual magazine.

POWTOON

I used the video animation maker PowToon to visualise the tasks for consumer behaviour and family business management. PowToon offers a wide range of animated templates ready to use to create more visually appealing presentations. These serve as a good source of inspiration and starting point. It is possible to use own images or you can choose from PowToon’s free resources to craft an own video and amplify the message. Resources include characters, shapes, background images or videos, props and sound effects that can fairly easily be inserted, placed and changed. The handling is quick and simple. Especially after having watched a tutorial it did not take long to get a feel of how everything worked. This was essential as users are only granted a 4-day free trial. The only downside to PowToon is the high power consumption of the programme. I had to shut down my computer several times during editing as my computer overheated. Working with PowToon was very entertaining. This tool is my favourite out of the three tools I have worked with.

PREZI

For the creative task of destination management I worked with Prezi. This is the tool I enjoyed working with the least. I had never worked with Prezi before because I’m very proficient with Microsoft PowerPoint. Prezi is said to be a good tool when you are trying to tell a story through your presentation. Points can be emphasized by zooming in on certain parts of one slide. However, Prezi is an unstable platform and therewith anything but user-friendly. It is fidgety, frequently crashing, resizing and moving both images and text. Prezi offers only a limited range of shapes and lines compared to PowerPoint and images have to uploaded instead of being dragged and dropped. I have seen engaging and visually appealing Prezis before. However, in my personal opinion Prezi presentations generally lack a professional look & feel. I prefer clean, modern and simplistic presentation that help you get your points across without flashy animations. Hence, in the future I will continue using Microsoft PowerPoint for presentations.

CONCLUSION

Over the time of creating the ePortfolio I have gained valuable experiences for the future. Looking back the ePortfolio was one of my highlights during my studies. It taught me to think out-of-the-box and coherently at the same time. The most valuable learning is that a bunch of free tools exist that are very helpful when starting a business with a limited budget. It is amazing to see how much you can do for free. With website builders like Wix everyone can create professional looking websites regardless of your skill level. I’m planning to adapt my ePortfolio slightly to use it in the future.