Portfolio Websites for Arts and Humanities Students: A Collaborative Workshop Series Approach
Over the course of the Spring 2025 semester, Grinnell College’s Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative (DLAC) and the Arts, Media & Communications Career Community in the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS) led an inaugural 3-part workshop series to provide arts and humanities students with the skills necessary to create their own portfolio websites. Portfolios are beneficial tools for self-reflection, as well as competitive assets for internships, jobs, and graduate school applications. The workshop series began with discussion of the value of sharing one’s work, provided time for students to draft their professional biographies, and then covered the nuts and bolts of how to build a portfolio in WordPress. DLAC facilitated student learning using the Elementor plugin and provided a base template for each student as a starting point. Through this workshop series, 30 students learned why and how to start sharing their own voices on the open web – and two campus offices made a valuable connection, allowing us to support each other’s work. We will now offer this workshop series on a regular basis. Join us to learn more about our approach, share your own thoughts on cross-departmental collaboration at your institution, and learn best practices for engaging students in the creation of academic and professional portfolio websites!
Session Author(s):
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Destini Ross, Associate Director of the Arts, Media & Communications Career Community, Grinnell College
Dr. Morris Pelzel, Director of Academic Technology, Grinnell College
Comments Archive
reclaimhosting: Welcome to the Chat
Stephen Downes: Gorp
Destini, Grinnell: Good morning everyone, thanks for being here!
Kim Droom: Test
Kim Droom: Hi Destini, thanks for joining Reclaim Open. It is actually Jim Groom here, but the chat wouldn't take my actual name.
Todd: Kim Droom... Really...
Destini, Grinnell: Hi Jim! Thanks again for the opportunity.
maren: Hi everyone
maren: Really looking forward to this session
Mo Pelzel: Thanks for being here, y'all!
Kim Droom: I appreciate how thorough the work this group has done to support folks getting up and running. A lot of cross-over with the work Oneonta is doing---supported projects make all the difference.
Mark Corbett Wilson: Wix is an Israeli company. I don't recommend using it.
Destini, Grinnell: Mark, thanks for your insight. The impetus for our student use of WordPress websites is moving away from platforms like Wix and Squarespace as the default.
maren: I use Elementor quite often, so I am very interested in learning what you found useful in this context
Tierney Steelberg: Here is a link to the documentation we built out for students in the workshop, within our existing DoOO documentation: https://sites.grinnell.edu/support/art-humanities-portfolio/
Mark Corbett Wilson: Having a Domain of One's Own is better for many reasons.
Tierney Steelberg: @maren, we have used Elementor across various campus web projects and have gotten good feedback from students we've worked with who have used it. It felt like an easier entry point than the full site editor, and it was easy to set up a template that students could then customized with very little barrier to entry
Tom Woodward: The idea of "right sizing" the option you give to students makes life so much more pleasant. DoOO with support and plans to go above and beyond makes good sense. It doesn't work as well when you just have 123 basic WP installs. I think the mix of a WPMS for basic WP with higher support promises, having DoOO for outliers, and then Cloud for really different/high demand things would be optimal.
Bonnie Stewart: i like this framework...i do a lot of visual language literacies development with education students so they too can create outputs as independent creators...same challenges to overcome
Pilot: Those are awesome numbers. (NINE FIRST YEARS?!)
Jim Groom: @Tom I totally agree, and we have more and more schools doing a mix of both for just that reason. Sometimes WPMS is more than enough, for others they want more, even if just with WP with more freedom to explore and build.
Mark Corbett Wilson: Alan Levine's (cogdog) SPLOTs are a good WP entry point. Simplist Possible Learning... there are differing names.
Tierney Steelberg: @Pilot, all a testament to Destini's amazing and very popular work with our students, haha!
maren: @Tierney, that's great to hear. Good to see those templates in use to support students work
Tom Woodward: Nice! https://jamessnyder.sites.grinnell.edu/
Tierney Steelberg: @Bonnie Stewart, yes, it's all about empowering students as independent creators! Great to hear of your work on visual language literacies development, that sounds fascinating
Tom Woodward: He's also on Behance https://www.behance.net/jameslsnyder
Destini, Grinnell: Thank you, Bonnie! I think it is perhaps the most important part of the college-to-career transition
Destini, Grinnell: And making that work public facing is such a tangible way to encourage that transition in framing/mindset
Joe Murphy: I love the idea of teaching students how to write bio pages. (1) because I personally need that workshop (2) because I've been part of too many workshops which taught "writing on the web" and "writing in the discipline" as separate. Which always seemed like an efficient use of time, and frequently wasn't.
Mo Pelzel: @Tom ... thanks for putting in those links ... I was actually not familiar with Behance.
Tom Woodward: @Mo that idea that there are communities specific to different future careers that mix and extend/expand the portfolio is interesting and fun to me but hard to always know the different spaces (like I'd love to blend codepen.io and a web design portfolio)
Destini, Grinnell: Joe, thank you for your thoughts! I don't think of writing for web/discipline as separate at the undergraduate level. I think plain language is increasingly attractive within many disciplines, so the gap between the two is lessening.
Jim Groom: Just so you know, the next session on CBOX going live now: https://reclaimopen.com/session/building-connections-and-open-ed-tech-with-the-cbox-openlab-community/
Jim Groom: Thanks Tierney, Mo, and Destini, really appreciate you all!
Mo Pelzel: Thanks all!
Mark Corbett Wilson: Thanks to all!
Tierney Steelberg: Thank you all so much for your engagement!
