Working Out Loud: Creating Project Progress ePortfolios

For the Erasmus+ project #DigiCulTS I have created an ePortfolio about our project progress by using the online tool wakelet. Promoting transparency of our work and connections with our target groups.

Working Out Loud

When you Work Out Loud, your contributions over time build trust and deepen a sense of relatedness, increasing the chances for cooperation and collaboration. 

John Stepper

One basic step of Working Out Loud, an approach developed by John Stepper, is to share your work and your experiences and to contribute to discussions. Very often it is hard to tell: What exactly are coworkers from other departments or project partners doing and working? Which kinds of experiences do they have?

Working Out Loud can help as people start to share what they are doing, they are seeking for contact and relationships with others. And this is also, what we would like to accomplish in our project.

Find your Peers and Allys

Who are your peers? Who are your allies? There are more people out there who are interested in the same topic as you think. You just need to find them. That’s why the project members of #digicults are active on different social media channels, always using the same hasthag. Furthermore, we are also continuously checking which online communities are there to connect. There are weekly postings using #digicults to discuss and to share experiences and progress.

Making Project Progress Visible

Now, as we are facing the first reporting deadline for the digitcults project, it was time to take a look back. We have created various social media postings and other artefacts. I have created a show-case portfolio, defined what we have achieved in the different months of the project up to now and selected the best postings and artefacts as proof.

My Tool of Choice

I have chosen “wakelet”, as it allows to include links from social media and the www but it is also possible to upload different types of data.

Here It Is: The Wakelet ePortfolio

How Are You Sharing Your Work?

How are you sharing your work? Which tools and networks are you using and how did you benefit from it?

Regaring research projects – what are your strategies to communicate your research progress and outcomes? How do you connect to the public and your potential target group? How do you include them into the research process?

Please share your experiences in the comments below! I’d love to learn more about different ways of science communication.