The Mahara ePortfolio is a platform and tool to give UC students an opportunity to create a unique structures for their future actions and plans. Creating the Mahara ePortfolio is a great technique for helping the users to build detailed plans that are so important for any kind of goal-driven person. Students are especially in need of this platform as they require a clear organization in order to form their future pursuits and achieve their goals successfully.
Creating the Mahara ePortfolio facilitates focused critical thinking concerning the future aspirations. With the help of the Mahara ePortfolio, the abstract ideas and hopes can be easily turned into step by step guides for the graduates providing the basis for structured progress and professional development. Besides, the Mahara ePortfolio helps the students create clear and professional curriculum vitae and a cover letter that reflects all the important aspects of their personality, professional achievements, ideas, and goals. Such portfolio is a valuable document for the student and a necessary attribute for the employer who uses resume and covers letters as a method of initial assessment, especially knowing how unreliable such documents can be due to the applicants’ desire to introduce themselves in the best way possible and fabricate some of the experiences and achievements.
Working on my five-year plan was a very useful exercise to develop my skills in critical thinking. In order to design appropriate and precise goals, I had to evaluate myself carefully and identify the areas I wanted to improve. This activity can be a real challenge because it really makes one dig through their own achievements and critically evaluate their value, in order to do that I turned my attention towards my expectations of myself and my life. They became my guides. Evaluating myself, I tried to cover all of the aspects of myself – professional skills, personal features, and character qualities, appearance.
As a result, I formulated objectives concerning the development of my management and organizational skills, improvement of my attractiveness, competence, and emotional maturity. I directed a great portion of my focus towards my ability to manage change, as in my opinion, constant development, learning, and self-improvement are the keys to professional and personal flexibility, which is a vital feature of a successful professional. The focus of my five-year plan was ongoing self-improvement targeting all of the dimensions one by one. In order to facilitate a gradual development, I arranged by objectives in a manner that the ones touching the same dimension were not next to each other. This way, my plan addressed a wide range of diverse activities, which, in the end, would result in an all-consuming improvement.
Thinking of my S. M. A. R. T. objectives I remembered that my plan would not be effective if there was no way to evaluate the progress. This is why I added numerical details to my objectives. For example, in order to develop my professional competence, I created an objective to learn at least five new strategies. This way, I gave myself away to evaluate my progress. For example, if I learned only three new strategies, I would know that my progress level is not the best, but if I learned six new strategies, I would know I was doing excellent. At the same time, I kept in mind that my goals were to be diverse and target different aspects of my professionalism and personality
Overall, the work I have done during my tutorials and creating my five-year plan enforced deep and careful self-evaluation, application of critical thinking and rational approach toward where I am now and where I see myself in five years.