SEEK E-Portfolio Program
From Classroom to Career-Ready
OLLU’s e-portfolio program known as SEEK (Skills, Experience, E-Portfolio Knowledge) helps students build extensive online portfolios to use when creating résumés for job and graduate school applications and interviews.
Beginning their freshman year, students build their e-portfolios and begin collecting signature assignments, documenting skills, and cataloging experiences that will help them develop impressive résumés and be career-ready at graduation. Throughout their undergraduate courses, students will continue adding to their e-portfolios making connections from their course work to their future careers.
The e-portfolios are built in Handshake, an online system available through OLLU’s Center for Career Development and Testing, that students can continue to use after they graduate. Handshake also is the platform where students can connect with employers when seeking internships and jobs.
Through this innovative program, OLLU students SEEK connections that will give them an edge as they SEEK their dream careers.
How SEEK Was Developed
SEEK Transformation was developed as OLLU’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). The QEP is part of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) reaffirmation of accreditation process that all institutions take part in every 10 years. The goal of the QEP is to enhance student learning and/or student success.
SEEK resulted from a thorough ideation, selection, and development process that began in 2017 and included feedback and input from students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni. The University’s 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, “Our Vision for 2025: Higher Education. Higher Purpose,” and OLLU’s Mission served as the guiding documents in the development of SEEK.
The OLLU QEP: SEEK (Skills, Experience, E-Portfolio, Knowledge) Transformation establishes
a university-wide undergraduate E-Portfolio program that aims to provide each first-time
in college (FTIC) undergraduate with the technological and academic infrastructure
to collect their signature assignments, provide opportunities for students to make
connections about their learning, and help students to gain career preparedness.
To achieve this goal, SEEK Transformation’s activities support the following Student
Learning Outcomes (SLO):
SLO 1. Students demonstrate the skills necessary to represent themselves effectively using an E-Portfolio.
SLO 2. Students acquire and demonstrate knowledge, skills, and abilities to connect out of classroom and in-classroom learning.
SLO 3. Students develop a personal mission statement.
To ensure FTIC undergraduates receive the intervention throughout their studies, SEEK will utilize the first-year experience course to lay the foundation necessary to build an effective E-Portfolio, the general education curriculum to add additional intervention points so that students can connect out of classroom and in-classroom learning and reflect on the value of a liberal arts experience to their professional development. The Center for Career Development and Testing will serve as a nexus of support and training for Handshake, the platform for our student’s E-Portfolio.