
CNA Websites		Register		Login		Accessibility		Français

HOME

KNOWLEDGE FEATURES

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

CERTIFICATION

CE COURSES

e-TOOLS

NURSECONNECT

Continuing Competence	Career Development	Continuing Education	Indigenous Knowledge
Nursing as a career

Building my Online Portfolio

The Canadian Nurses Portal includes an online portfolio to help you build information about yourself and evidence of your personal and professional development. It also has the facility, through use of action plans, to help you identify future goals and recognize how you might move towards those goals.

The portal is broken up into sections that will guide you as you collect information, and enable you to build profiles for different purposes or create a resumé.

It can help to see how others are compiling information in their portfolios, and the style and level of detail they include. Your portfolio is personal to you — but you may want to see excerpts from a lifelong learner's portfolio.

An Online Portfolio

There are a number of benefits in using an online portfolio. An online portfolio framework consists of a series of templates that can be reproduced to grow with your needs. The templates can be printed or expanded, stored, manipulated and transferred electronically.

The Canadian Nurses Portal provides such a framework. The units of this learning section explain how to develop your portfolio, and offer examples of the kinds of content you might want to include. Take a look to help you decide whether the templates will suit your personal and professional needs or preferences.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

Benefits of an Online Portfolio

The Canadian Nurses Portal's online portfolio section may not be right for everyone — but, for those who like this form of personal development, it is designed for easy use. You might want to review the different types of portfolio available.

The online portfolio:

provides templates for gathering evidence;
links to learning areas that help with portfolio development;
enables you to create action plans to focus on further development needs;
can be easily updated, and changed whenever you want;
can be opened from wherever you have web access;
increases your technology skills by using and developing the site;
can be easily communicated, i.e. selected material can be saved to disk or e-mailed directly to a reviewer;
automatically generates a resumé; and
requires minimal storage space, as material is stored digitally.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

Managing Information

One benefit of an online portfolio is that information can be altered electronically or shared with others at the click of a mouse button. Choose Portfolio and then select Send or Save Portfolio .

Formatting your information — Your information can be saved as a word-processing document, then formatted in any way you like, just as you would a written document. (If you are not familiar with this process, consult the appropriate world processing text(s) or tutorials.) Consider what you want to do with information as you organize and prepare the materials, then send it as an e-mail attachment as needed.
Selecting information to share — Think carefully about what you want to share. You might decide, for example, that material in My Achievement , My Learning and My Employment is relevant. Click on each box to select it. You can also save or e-mail folders containing your evidence and action plans; this is dealt with in My Plans and Evidence .
Sharing your personal information — It's a good idea to preview selected materials to check that there is nothing present that would breach your professional confidentiality, or that you do not wish to share. Then you can send your information by filling in the appropriate e-mail screen, plus any message you may wish to send. The portfolio information will be automatically attached as an “html” file.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

CNP Portfolio Sections

The learning sections of the Canadian Nurses Portal's online portfolio are:

My Information — personal details, interests etc.
My Achievements — significant achievements in life/work including publications and presentations.
My Learning — certificates, formal periods of study.
My Employment — formal employers, but also relevant unpaid jobs and details of areas of responsibility/role details.
My Plans and Evidence —different sources of evidence such as written testimonials, case studies, diaries or personal reflections, from practice or personal life that support the development of action plans. The action plans, in turn, encourage you to identify goals, objectives or competencies that you want to achieve or demonstrate.

From all this material, resumés or personal profiles can be generated by selecting various pieces of information and then used for a variety of different purposes.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

My Information

This information forms the basis of your resumé or portfolio and should be kept current. You will record here what most employers require, but also information regarding your continuing competence.

In this section, there are a number of facilities that you can access. Scroll down from the Portfolio icon to My Information. The drop-down menu will present the following options:

My Personal Details — Take a look at details that you are currently storing. You can change these by clicking on the Edit button. You can change your password by selecting Change Password and following the instructions. Don't forget to select Submit after each of the above actions.
My Bookmarks — This option allows you to mark areas that are useful or important to you so that you can access them quickly. You can bookmark different parts of the site by selecting this icon, and you can alter your list by selecting each item and the appropriate instruction button.
My Resumé — When applying for jobs it is important to have current, relevant information. This section automatically gathers the information you have stored and generates a resumé. You can tailor the information you want by selecting the different items. This can then be saved to disk or e-mailed for comment. When you save this content, it is saved as a word document that can be changed to different formats to suit your needs or those of a particular audience.
My Calendar — The CNP has been designed to allow information that is relevant to you to be added to your calendar, as well as providing a place to record personal meetings and appointments. If you check you will find information on meetings and events added regularly. By selecting that item, you can find out more about it or delete what is not of interest. You can view the calendar in a daily, weekly or monthly format.
My News — This enables you to select news that you consider most relevant. Select the categories of information that you want forwarded, from 12 fields of practice. Please note that if you do not select at least one field, no events will appear in your calendar.

Select My Personal Details to go to the Portfolio area to begin inputting content.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

My Achievements

Your portfolio provides the chance to gather information that really says something about you and your past accomplishments. Some may be self-explanatory, such as publications or presentations that you have given. But also think more about what you have achieved. Choose Select a template or use the Blank form option to create your own category of evidence. Select the arrow beside the Select a template list, choose the required option and then select New for a template to help you compile material.

There are three options:

Record of Publication — List articles, newsletter features, letters or abstracts that you have had published. You should adopt a consistent format so that when you present the material there is a common style. Citations can be edited or deleted by using the buttons at the foot of each submission.
Record of Presentation — Talks, speeches or workshops where you've led or facilitated sessions could be included here. These don't have to be formal presentations at conferences or verbal presentations but could be visual — for example posters, videos or performance art presentations.
Record of Personal Achievement — This template allows you to think much more broadly about things you have done that you consider to be real achievements. This could be things you do in your role as family member or for a hobby.

You can select My achievements to go to your Portfolio area to begin inputting content.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

My Learning

In this section you have different templates to choose from for gathering evidence of your formal learning experiences that you have undergone. These may range from initial professional preparation to one-off events where you had little involvement. Choose the required option from the Select a template list, then select New .

The template options you have available are:

Professional Nursing Qualifications — This should include any certificates, diplomas or degrees that are directly related to nursing.
Non-nursing Qualifications — This should include any certificates, diplomas or degrees that are not directly related to nursing.
Certificate — This should include accredited courses or those that have provided a certificate of achievement or attendance.
Non-certificate — This should include any course where you have no documented evidence; you can still record what you feel you have learned.
Event Undertaken — Think about more informal learning that has occurred through different activities such as working on a health or recruitment fair, attending meetings, shadowing a colleague or manager or even, perhaps, a politician.

For each, try to focus on what you learned. This shouldn't simply be what the course program might have described as “learning outcomes” but what you feel you gained from the experience. This might include an issue that had meaning for you or your practice, a networking opportunity or a resource you identified as useful. Record this information in the Synopsis of Learning section of the template.

Visit your portfolio and record your learning.

My Employment

In this section, you can record past and present work experience. Select the arrow beside the Select a template list, choose Employment history and then select New . The template will allow you to fill in details of your job. However, in order to reflect on what you've gained from various positions, complete the two sections listed:

Describe work area/practice setting, main focus of work
Describe main duties, responsibilities, significant achievements

Further information can be added to the template, or the whole item can be removed by using the edit and delete keys.

You can select My Employment to go to Portfolio to begin inputting or updating content.

Visit your portfolio and record what you have learned.

My Plans and Evidence

This section is designed to help you collect several different kinds of evidence and develop action plans for what you hope to achieve in the future.

The first step is to create a folder where you can store your action plan and evidence. Do this by selecting the New Folder button. This will open a window where you can name the folder you're creating. You might base your title on a particular learning or practice goal, e.g. Update Moving and Handling Skills, or on a required activity, e.g. Performance Appraisal. As you create more folders you can select from the list on the My Plans and Evidence page or navigate to them using the drop-down menu starting at the Portfolio tab at the top of the screen.

Once you've typed in the title, select Submit. This will take you back to My Plans and Evidence, where all the folders that you've created to date will be listed. You can opt to display your most current or frequently used folder on your home page by selecting Set as active link.

When you've created a folder, you can develop an action plan and begin to add associated evidence: