Here’s a Free Tool to Build an E-Learning Portfolio

A guest post by Elizabeth Pawlicki, Training Program Manager, Articulate.

You need a portfolio! Even if you’re not currently looking for a new job, maintaining a portfolio is important as an archive to highlight your work and experience.

In previous posts, we covered what should be in your portfolio and how to build one (with links to some potential sites).

However, I continue to get questions on how to host and manage a portfolio.  That’s what I’ll cover today.

Free Portfolio Site

Recently I came across a free tool called SpreadSimple, which is really cool because it builds websites out of Google Sheets (something many of us already know how to use). You create columns of information, and it takes a single line on a Google Sheet and turns it into a “card” on the site.

Demo Portfolio

I really liked that I didn’t need to do any programming and by adding content to Google Sheets I was able to create a simple website. So, I created a portfolio to test how easy it is to use. You can see it below.

Click here to view the portfolio.

How to Build the Portfolio

Keep in mind, the SpreadSimple site uses Google Sheets to pull in the data for the site. However, it doesn’t host your media. So, you’ll need a place to host your courses and images. There are a number of options here, but I used Amazon S3.

I added the portfolio content to my Google Sheet, added links to courses on Amazon S3, and in no time at all, I had a modern, professional looking web-based portfolio.

I really didn’t need much on my sheet, so I started with my course title, a description, the link to where the course was being hosted in S3, and the link to the course thumbnail, also in S3.

Later, I realized that SpreadSimple allowed for filtering when viewing the completed site, so I added a “Tools” column to my Google Sheet and organized my courses by whether they were built in Storyline 360 or Rise 360.

To give you an idea of just how little you really need to build a site, here’s a behind the scenes look at my Google Sheet.

It’s really easy to build and manage a portfolio this way. Here’s a quick tutorial where you can watch me add a new course to my portfolio just by adding a new line to Google Sheets, filling in the cells, and refreshing the SpreadSimple page.

Click here to view the tutorial.

If you don’t already have a portfolio, give SpreadSimple a try. The service is free if you don’t need to use any of the integrations or set up a custom domain. I found it quick and intuitive.

What do you think?

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