Showcases are the most important feature of the CN ePortfolio. They support you to demonstrate your work samples, achievements, and skills in detail.

Here are a few ideas for using Showcases to strengthen your ePortfolio and personal branding. 

• Create a Showcase, add photos, and describe your extracurricular activities, such as community service, summer camp, study abroad, or internship. 
• Create a Showcase to demonstrate your coursework. For example, create a Showcase and name it by the course name, Literature 305, write about what you have learned in this course, and attach assignments and course project files. Or, you may only present one major course project, reflect on your experience, and add collaborators. Create Showcases for all core courses to give a comprehensive view of your academic accomplishments. 
• Create a Showcase to present your skills and competencies that potential employers are looking for. For example, create a Showcase and name it “Web Design”. Then write about your web design skills and projects, and support your points by attaching work samples, such as design files, links to the websites you created, etc.

A Showcase has two major components: a summary card and a detailed Showcase section. The section below will guide you in creating each component: 

Create a Showcase

Step 1: Set up Showcase summary card 

Scenario One: Your institution/program already set up the Showcase

If your institution/program licenses CN and has set up institution Showcases, you can find such Showcases with an institution icon and a big blue button on their summary cards, like the one below. In this case, you may hover over the top part of the summary card, and then click the pencil icon to edit the summary card. 

You may upload/update the cover image (see #1 below), edit the Showcase title (see #2), and enter a short summary about the Showcase (see #3). Once done, click Save. 

Now, you are ready to click the big blue button to edit the detailed Showcase section. 

Scenario Two: Add a new Showcase by yourself

Adding a fresh new Showcase to your CN ePortfolio is very easy:

First, go to the "Showcases" section. Click + Add New Showcase. 

After clicking + Add New Showcase, you will be prompted to create the Showcase summary card. On this card, upload a cover image (see #1 below), enter the Showcase title (see #2), and enter a short summary (see #3). Once you are finished with creating the showcase summary card, click on Save.

Hint: The Google Image feature allows you to search images by topic. You may leverage it to find nice cover images for your Showcase. 

Once the summary card is saved, click the blue button to Add Detailed Showcase Section.

Step 2: Complete Detailed Showcase Section

The detailed Showcase section gives you a space to articulate and reflect in detail. It also supports you to embed or attach multimedia artifacts.

If you are completing an institution-created Showcase template, you are likely to find the completion instructions, assessment guidelines, and rubric above the text editor. Please read through this information before creating your content. 

This is how you can complete the detailed Showcase section part by part (please find the numbers in the screenshot below):

1. Use this simple text editor to write about your projects, skills, and accomplishments. If you need advanced formatting options, such as bolding text and embedding images and files, click "Switch to Rich Text Editor" from the top-right. Read this article for more detail: Create advanced showcases using rich text editor.

2. You may add files, images, and videos as attachments towards the bottom of the showcase.

3. If you are documenting a project and there are collaborators on the project, you can add up to 10 of them. The collaborators with a CN account will receive a notification to view and endorse your Showcase. Please note that only institution users and Premium CN users can add collaborators. 

4. Add skills that are demonstrated in this showcase. These skills will be automatically added to the Skills section of your ePortfolio and help viewers of your ePortfolio filter relevant artifacts. 

5. For each new showcase, a post is automatically created on CN Home page to invite your followers and users with similar skills and academic interests to view this showcase. If you don't want this post to be generated, uncheck the box in the bottom-right corner. 

Once you have completed anything, Submit the showcase. 

Edit an Existing Showcase

After a showcase is created, you can edit the summary card from the icons on the top. These icons are shown when you hover over the color/image area. By clicking anywhere on the summary card, you will be directly taken to the detailed showcase section.

You can also make edits, remove Showcase, copy the Showcase URL, and adjust its visibility settings from the upper-right corner of the detailed section.

Showcase URL

If you need to submit your showcase for an assignment, you can click on the link icon in the upper-right corner of the detailed section to copy the URL of your Showcase.

Open/Close Detailed Showcase Sections

In the upper-right corner of the Showcases summary card section, you may use the checkbox to control if detailed Showcase sections are open or closed by default on your ePortfolio. If the box is checked, the detailed Showcase sections will open by default. If the box is unchecked, the detailed Showcase sections will not open until its summary card is clicked. This logic applies to both you and any ePortfolio viewers. 

Note: this feature is released May 10, 2021. ePortfolios created before this date have the box checked to be consistent with the old logic. New ePortfolios created after this date have the box unchecked to keep the page simple.

Related Article: to reorder ePortfolio sections, please read ePortfolio Menu.