What to bring: Curriculum Vitae in MSWord in plain text (i.e. no tables, tabs, etc.). If you need some backup on how to write a C.V. we have put together a resource page, where you can find links and examples.

Workshop Goals:
1. To create a professional web site based on your CV. This site will have links to a teaching portfolio, your writing or samples of it, organizations with which you are affiliated and so on. There will be a link to your PDF format CV so visitors can print the information easily.
2. To become familiar with other professional development opportunities available through web-based technologies.

Introduction: This two-day workshop will focus on the fundamental concepts and basic skills necessary for you to develop a professional identity through web-based technologies. The first day will focus on strategies for and implications of using technology generally and creating a web site specifically for professional development - identifying and accessing grants, making a professional, ethical appeal through web-based technologies, and thinking about expanded opportunities that technology makes available for your professional development. In the second day, you'll focus on planning, designing, and creating a web-site that can accommodate your discipline- and field-specific needs now and as your career develops.

Outline:
         I. The Career Center at Washington University

        II. The Ethical Appeal of Professional Development Online
                A. Communication, reputation, and technology
                        1. The ghost of flame wars past
                        2. Technology is only as effective as the user
                B. The implicit ethical appeal of your website
                        1. First impressions
                        2. Images and Visual Effects: friend or foe?
                        3. Levels of exposure
                C. Integrate your identity

        III. Professional development with web-based technology
                A. Grants            
                        1. Commercial Databases
                        2. General Search Engines
                        3. Grant Writing Tips
                B. Teaching, Technology, and the Job Market
                C. Integrating Instructional Technology into your Teaching Portfolio
                D. Review of some Grad Student Professional Pages

        IV. Setting Up Your Professional Page
                A. Elements of design
                B. Converting Your CV into HTML Format
                C. Editing Your CV into a site
                D. Saving Your Professional Page
                E. Converting your CV into pdf Format

V. Evaluation

I. The Career Center at Washington University

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II. The Ethical Appeal of Professional Development Online
The web and web-based technologies make available several methods for graduate and professional students to establish, present, and enhance themselves and their careers online. Perhaps the first, best place to start is with a definition of the central term of the discussion for the next two days: your professional identity online refers not simply to a web page on which you post your CV but to a whole range of elements you create, maintain, or contribute to (emailing your advisor or peers, for example) and a variety of activities in which you may participate both actively (for instance, contributing to a bulletin board discussion) or passively (say, lurking silently on a professional listserv). What this definition probably suggests to you is that you may have already been creating a professional identify and reputation for yourself through your use of web-based technologies whether you knew it or not. This recognition should raise some obvious issues.

A. Communication, reputation, and technology
Online communication (email, listservs, newsgroups, discussion boards, etc.) can often be as or more integral a part of your professional identity than a web site devoted your career. Participating in a listserv of a professional association or organization, for example, can be a useful way to build relationships and make connections (as well as discuss important topics and engage in academic debates) in your field. However, listservs are also one of the most public forms of communication that exists today; a message you post to a professional listserv may go to thousands of people - among them the most respected, well-known, and established experts in your field - and archived in a searchable database accessible to anyone with an internet browser. Surprisingly, it does not always go without saying that every contribution to an online discussion is an opportunity for you to make a powerful, lasting statement about yourself, a statement that could have long-term effects on your career.

1. The ghost of flame wars past
The email or listserv-post that you dash off in a rush of conviction, passion, or debate may haunt you in ways you have never imagined. Consider this post to the listserv of North American Society for Study of Romanticism from May 2001:

The tone of your comment oozes with hypocrisy, cowardice, and blackmail … having dealt with your attitude before, I can predict what the final outcome of your type of gutless double-standard is going to be. … I have repeatedly challenged the fascistic assumption lurking under diversity management … Your diversionary moralizing is in actuality most immoral. Why be so spineless about the expression of honest differences? Just what do you think you've got to lose?

2. Technology is only as effective as the user
Even when you are not animated with the passion of professional conviction, you can run amok if you fail to remember the function of the technology you're using. The result can seriously imperil your credibility among peers, colleagues, and potential employers. Consider this email, posted by a reputable expert in literary studies who forgot that hitting REPLY to a listserv message sends a message to the listserv and not just the person who sent the message:

HI Steve,

Well, I guess we all just have to love one another, and let the jackals howl in their pointless pack. meanwhile, with 3 brilliant Keats essays to nominate for this year's KSAA prize (wd that we had such riches last year!), I find that one of our definite "no"s (Pascoe) is heading the judging panel this year. 'What a world.

See you in NOLA anyway?
Best, Susan

B. The implicit ethical appeal of your website
Your audience will make immediate and sustained judgments about you, your credibility, the quality of scholarship and teaching, and your potential as soon as they enter your site and as long as they navigate through it. Your page will project an image of you and your personality, not just to friends but potentially to anyone with a web browser. Consequently, you need to think seriously about the kinds of audiences that may view your site (not just the audience you intend to reach).

1. First impressions
Even online, you only get one chance …. http://home.fnal.gov/~rocky/
…. To make a good first impression http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~gsbarkin/

2. Images and Visual Effects: friend or foe?
Visuals can add an entertaining element to your site: http://levee.wustl.edu/~white/
But photos of yourself or the kind of work you do are not necessary: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~drharris/dreamtest.htm
And sometimes, visual elements like animation are a really bad idea. http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~ashwin/
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~baojie/
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~lyang/

3. Levels of exposure
Less is not always more: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~lbach/
Clear organization and consistent navigation options are vital to coherent web sites: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~rdshirey

C. Integrate your identity
With this discussion in mind, think about ways to integrate the various aspects of what you do as a graduate or professional student into a coherent web site that emphasizes your strengths, skills, and relevant experience. Also think about simple ways to direct people to your web site or professional page so that they can see a more comprehensive picture of your professional identity than what you might otherwise project through limited participation in online professional activities (for instance, once your page is up and running, you may want to include its address in your email signature). Leeann Adams demonstrates one Flash-assisted way of embedding skills and experience into the design and organization of a site's structure. Keep your ideas ready; you will build and expand on them tomorrow.

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III. Your Professional Identity and the Web

A. Grants
Many resources and forms of support for graduate and professional students are increasingly being posted and maintained online. Knowing how to identify, access, and take advantage of this information and these opportunities is an integral component of academic and professional development and requires its own set of critical and technical skills. The university maintains a page about external grants.

1. Commercial Databases

2. General Search Engines

3. Grant Writing Tips

B. Teaching, Technology, and the Job Market
While teaching with technology has its own merits, there is mounting evidence that it also offers a competitive edge to job candidates. Achieving "excellence in teaching" at today's universities increasingly requires an understanding of strategies for enhancing learning through technology. There is no clearer way to demonstrate your familiarity with the web and Internet technology than giving yourself a professional identity online. Colleagues and potential employers can see for themselves how you are participating in your discipline and how savvy your are about technology if you create a professional page that not only gives your scholarly credentials but also demonstrates some of your technological skills. What you include on your page depends on your tastes and level of enthusiasm. Most academic web sites include a minimum of a CV, teaching portfolio or history, and contact information. You might also want to include links to your course site or some personal background, though keep in mind the caveats discussed in section I.

C. Integrating Instructional Technology into a Teaching Portfolio
"Excellence in teaching," as Hannelore Rodriquez-Farrar has remarked in The Teaching Portfolio, "has become a stock phrase in most faculty job descriptions; yet how does one demonstrate this to current colleagues and/or future employers? One answer is a Teaching Portfolio which is a description of an instructor's major strengths and teaching achievements. It describes documents and materials which collectively suggest the scope and quality of an instructor's teaching proficiency." A good place to start when deciding how to integrate instructional technology into your teaching portfolio is the Teaching Portfolio page on the Teaching Center's web site.

In integrating your use of instructional technology into your teaching portfolio, you might consider the following:

• Present a balanced portfolio. Do not neglect your more traditional teaching experience in favor of technology.
  
  
• Focus on pedagogical issues (as outlined in your teaching philosophy). Explain how technology can be used as a tool to enhance learning in your discipline. Consider technology's limitations as a teaching tool.
  
  
• Document your interest in and experience with technology.
  
  
• Ask students to evaluate the web enhanced aspects of your course.
  
  
• Save web projects to disk (so they do not disappear when you graduate or your class account is closed).
  
  
• Present papers, attend workshops, or publish articles on instructional technology.
  
  
• Join professional online discussions on instructional technology.
  
  
• Do not assume that those reviewing your teaching portfolio will be technophiles (or technophobes for that matter).
  
  
• Make sure you present an informed approach to appropriate and effective uses of technology in teaching.

D. Review of some Grad Student Professional Pages

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IV. Setting Up Your Professional Page
Your professional page should be more than a Word document converted into HTML. Organizing the same set of information from a Word document for an online audience requires you to consider different design, presentation, and editing strategies: what do you want to emphasis, what kinds of information do you want to present, how can your audience move most logically and easily through those different kinds of information?

A. Elements of design
No matter what kind of web site your designing, there are some universal principles for best design practices that will help you create a site that is visually appealing. The elements of design covered in the Design module of the workshops will expose you to and familiarize you with these basic concepts.

B. Converting Your CV into HTML Format

1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. FILE - OPEN your CV document.
Make sure the SAVE IN field says 3 ½ Floppy (A:).
3. FILE - SAVE AS HTML FILE.
Again, make sure 3 ½ Floppy (A:) appears in the SAVE IN field.
4. In the FILE NAME field type "my_cv.html" and save.
5. Close the Microsoft Word.
6. Open Netscape Communicator from the desktop.
7. FILE - OPEN PAGE (Ctrl+O).
Make sure that OPEN LOCATION OR FILE IN COMPOSER is checked.
8. Click on CHOOSE FILE and make sure 3 ½ Floppy (A:) appears in the LOOK IN field.
9. Double click on the icon next to "my_cv.html". Your CV should appear in the Composer window.

C. From CV to web site
Using the skills you acquired in Workshops 1 and 2, edit your professional page by inserting tables, images, and links into your CV where appropriate. Here is an example of how your site might look. Some Ideas:

• Insert a table and edit your CV information in that format.
  
  
• Insert images (i.e University logo, picture of yourself, etc.).
  
  
• Try to fit the important information (i.e contact information) in the top of the screen.
  
  
• Try to put your entire CV on the same site.
  
  
• Create an index or list of contents and use targets to locate the topics on the page.
  
  
• Include your CV in PDF format (list of contents for example).
  
  
• When you scroll down the page do not forget to put "back to top" targets.
  
  
• Link important information like: universities, organizations, courses, papers, conferences, etc.

D. Saving your Professional Page

1. FILE - SAVE (Ctrl + S)
2. In file name type: index.html (Remember that naming a page index.html will make it the default page for your artsci account. People will see this page when the type in http://artsci.wustl.edu/~your_artsci_login /index.html, or when they simply type http://artsci.wustl.edu/~your_artsci_login/)
3. SAVE
4. Save all the images in your page by clicking "yes to all"

E. Converting your CV into PDF Format
In order to convert your CV into PDF format you should have Acrobat Distiller (this is not freeware) installed in your computer.

1. Using the examples and ideas in the CV resources page edit your CV in Microsoft Word.
2. FILE - CREATE ADOBE PDF (Or just click the icon in the menu bar)
3. CREATION OPTIONS - ACROBAT DISTILLER - CREATE.
4. The PDF file will appear in the same location you saved your original document.

V. Evaluation

Please click here to fill out an evaluation form for this year's workshops.

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