 In this video, we'll discuss how to craft two kinds of writing portfolios based on their rhetorical contexts. Writers use two kinds of portfolios, learning portfolios used for self-discovery and showcase portfolios used for self-presentation. Learning portfolios are meant to capture and reflect on your own learning and growth. Showcase portfolios are meant to demonstrate the best of your abilities for others. These portfolios vary considerably by purpose, audience, format, and message. The first factor to consider is your purpose. When you create a learning portfolio for self-discovery, you're collecting and curating writing artifacts in a way that demonstrates your development as a learner. You may also be developing an authentic writer identity through a personal learning portfolio based on a specific task. Because learning portfolios are designed to reflect on your personal writing journey, they highlight how your work is part of an arc of personal progression and may include evidence from both in and out of class. For instance, you can use a Google folder to create a personal portfolio to track and reflect upon your progress towards completing a personal writing task or one assigned for a class project. Because your goal is to visualize your development at every stage in the writing process, this learning portfolio will highlight your strengths and challenges and the decisions you made to overcome these challenges. For instance, you can use this portfolio to track changes in the direction of your work, how you made these changes, and how future work might reflect these changes. Throughout the process of creating your portfolio, you'll want to reflect on your learning. This reflection should articulate the context of the work's creation, the expectations for the work, the actions you took including strengths or challenges, what you learned from the experience, and how you anticipate applying this learning in the future. Including this reflection helps readers navigate your work and see your development as a learner. In contrast, showcase portfolios are used for self-presentation. They are designed to present your writing abilities and your accomplishments to a public who's interested in your work. For instance, a job seeker can use a showcase portfolio to direct potential employers to a report or article that demonstrates their writing abilities and accomplishments. At the end of the semester, a student may present a class writing portfolio and point to specific artifacts to demonstrate their development or proficiency in an outcome or learning objective over the course of the semester. What's important to note is that a showcase portfolio allows you to curate your best work for self-presentation. Therefore, similar to the learning portfolio, the artifacts you select and present and the format you choose will depend upon how carefully you have considered your specific purpose. Another factor you'll need to consider is your audience. Who will view this portfolio, why will they view it, and what will they expect? Learning portfolios are typically inward-facing, meaning they are private or shared with only a select audience. Your audience may expect a behind-the-scenes glimpse into your invention work. Writing teachers and classmates can appreciate the messiness of brainstorming, drafting, revision, and reflection, especially if their teaching or working through similar projects themselves. In contrast, showcase portfolios are typically public or outward-facing. These kinds of portfolios might be included as part of professional websites or submitted alongside job or grad school applications. As such, the audience may include potential employers, recruiters, collaborators, your online network of friends and acquaintances, fans of your work, and other strangers. Each interested in learning about your abilities and skills and hoping to be impressed or satisfied by the quality of your work. Always try to craft a portfolio that is sympathetic to your audience's needs and knowledge. You'll also want to consider the format of your portfolio and make decisions about how it's arranged and how your audience will access it. Will your portfolio be digital or analog? Will you structure it linearly or non-linearly? When formatting a learning portfolio, you can often make decisions based on the shared expectations of your specific audience. For example, your class or other learning group may already use Google Drive to share documents. If you use a Google Folder to curate and share your portfolio with that specific group, you can be confident that your attended audience will be able to access it. In contrast, the outward-facing nature of showcase portfolios means thinking more flexibly about how to make sure it is accessible for your audience. You might avoid any individual file types that would require someone to have a login or specific software to view them. You might also choose to create a personal website or other public-facing tool to curate your portfolio as a whole. As you curate a portfolio that is digital and public, consider how it fits into the rest of your presence online. Overall, the choices you make about formatting should align with the purpose and intended audience of your portfolio and support the message you want to send. Every portfolio should convey a message to the audience, and you, the portfolio curator, gets to choose what that message is. A learning portfolio weaves a narrative of how you created something and what you learned in the process. In support of this message, you might present a series of artifacts that reveal how you created a project from beginning to end and guide your reader through each step in the journey. A showcase portfolio, however, uses final products you've created to convince others of your current abilities and skills and pose an argument, sometimes explicit, that they demonstrate your potential to contribute to other projects in the future. To make this argument effectively, you might group the best representations of a particular skill together and comment on what it says about you. When curating your portfolio, consider what message you want to deliver to your readers and organize your portfolio to deliver that message effectively. As this video has shown, portfolio curators should consider the purpose, audience, format, and message of their portfolios. By considering these four aspects of portfolio curation, you ensure that your work is showcased in the most effective manner possible.