Introduction
Educational initiatives and technologies change, but the practices enabled by e-portfolio tools have, if anything, increasing relevance.
In this guide, we look at what e-portfolios are, the key drivers behind their use and the lessons that can be learned from recent examples of practice from institutions across the UK further (FE) and higher education (HE) sector.
Through the lens of the learner, we discuss key points arising from these exemplars to help you meet agendas that remain important today – enhancing learners’ employability, creating authentic assessments, establishing skills of independent learning, supporting personal and professional development, enabling the construction of knowledge and understanding through reflection … to name a few.
In the process, we also discover where e-portfolio practice is breaking new ground in UK universities and colleges.
Definition
Over a decade ago, our publication, effective practice with e-portfolios (Jisc 2008) drew on a consensus that the term e-portfolio referred to the product created from “purposeful aggregation of digital items [related to learning] which ‘presents’ a selected audience with evidence of a person’s learning and/or ability” (Sutherland and Powell 2007).
We continue to use that definition but does it tell the whole story?
After all, behind the creation of e-portfolios lie skills of ordering, planning, selecting, synthesising, discussing, reflecting, and designing content to present to different audiences. While developing this content, learners may also give and receive feedback and will almost certainly improve their digital capability.
Thus the development of e-portfolios involves processes that can be as important to a learner’s growth as the end product, the formal presentation(s) the learner makes to others.
Read more
Our short guide, getting started with e-portfolios provides a summary for those new to e-portfolios.
Our effective practice publication explains the value of e-portfolios in learning, teaching and assessment from three perspectives: learner, practitioner and institutional.
Purposes
Tools supporting e-portfolios are used in a wide variety of contexts and for different purposes.
On an increasing number of HE courses, e-portfolios provide opportunities for self-monitoring, reflective practice in an otherwise disciplinary-focused curriculum. In other undergraduate contexts, e-portfolio technology provides a backdrop to the formal curriculum, creating, for example, a supportive learning community or opportunities to demonstrate graduate attributes or digital capabilities.
In another setting, in particular in apprenticeships and work-based training, e-portfolios are the sole mechanism by which learning is tracked and assessed. More innovatively, a course may be delivered as well as assessed entirely via an e-portfolio platform.
For learners, the value of e-portfolios can take an entirely different slant. Learners may view their e-portfolios as the record of their learning journey, a digital space where they can record significant moments, develop a professional identity, celebrate achievements, discover who they are.
However, it is the “value addeds”, the skills acquired from creating e-portfolios that most often excite the interest of educators. An e-portfolio may provide the evidence that leads to a job or a qualification, but the process of developing it adds a great deal more to an individual’s employability and learning potential.
These different aims and purposes may not even be mutually exclusive. Unlike VLEs, e-portfolio tools enable connections to be made across many different learning experiences; they enable learners to reach out beyond the institution to employers and the wider world; they unite formal and informal learning and may even continue to be used across a lifetime of learning.
It is this rich flexibility, much valued in learning, teaching and assessment, which contributes so much to the complexity of the technology.
In this guide, we use the viewpoint of the learner to unravel the diversity of e-portfolios.
Who I am… and what I aspire to be
A guiding principle behind much e-portfolio practice in education is that the content created by the learner is owned by them. In the online space that lies at the heart of an e-portfolio system or suite of tools, learners store artefacts, articulate and reflect on their experiences, rehearse how to present aspects of their learning achievements to the outside world, and make plans to remedy gaps in their skills.
They then choose when and with whom to share the content they have created.
This process can set in motion a journey of self-discovery which in turn leads to longer-term personal and professional development. There is nothing static about learning who you are; not only does a process of longitudinal SWOT analysis improve your understanding of yourself, it also underpins what your next steps will be. Thus, over time, an e-portfolio can become an unfolding narrative of the steps you have taken towards your goals, and your development as a person.
Dialogue tools are equally important when defining who you are, the skills you have and who you wish to become. Being able to share a rounded picture of yourself, and what you aspire to be, is as important in terms of employability as the certificates or qualifications acquired from a programme of learning.
Read more
“It’s much more natural to learners to use something they see as their space. There they can build a showcase of talents and achievements which can be tied to the qualification the course gives them…’I have an HND, here is the certificate, but here is my e-portfolio which will tell you who I am.’”
Joe Wilson, head of technical and vocational education, City of Glasgow College
Examples of effective practice
Our exemplars show that with today’s modularised curriculum, and the growing number of contexts in which learning is taking place, e-portfolio tools have never been more needed to help learners make sense of who they are, their learning and what they wish to achieve.
Case study: Harlow College – digital storytelling for the future
Harlow College has transformed learning and teaching on full-time courses by providing learners and staff with iPads pre-installed with a selection of creative apps.
The initiative has not only revitalised classroom teaching but has also enabled learners at all levels in a general further education college to create digital narratives about who they are and what they have achieved. Stored in their Microsoft® OneDrive accounts or on the platform used for capture, these digital assets are ready to hand when opportunities come up to present themselves and their achievements to audiences such as employers.
With 21st century digital tools available on smartphones and tablets, the college poses the question: how can we best take advantage of what is freely available to foster learners’ employability and progression?
“With the loan of an iPad installed with some creative apps, our learners have a far greater range of opportunities than anything previously available to us to capture what they have been doing and fashion it into a presentation about themselves that is usable now and in the future.”
Dave Monk, e-learning development coordinator, Harlow College
Case study: Queen Mary University of London – a space to call your own
In this example, QMplus Hub, a Mahara-based learning space at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), provides e-portfolio, group work and networking facilities as a complement to the formal curriculum.
As a result, the Hub actively encourages student ownership of what takes place. A dashboard-style screen aids navigation to its key areas – Content, Portfolio or Groups – and can be personalised with regard to how inbox, notifications and messages are displayed.
Content is where students can create/upload and tag artefacts such as learning journals, job applications and drafts of work for presentation later in a portfolio. Portfolio pages, once created, can be submitted as assignments while Groups offers a Facebook-style social space for collaborative work, peer review and private communication.
The Hub has already proved its worth as a social networking facility within the formal curriculum. An example is the Year Abroad Community which offers information and support for students completing a year abroad as part of their degree.
Nonetheless, the drivers behind students’ use of the Hub are usually personal – learning how to study, reflecting on skills or drafts of work that will eventually be presented for assessment form the basis of much of its use by students. A key element in all of these purposes, however, is that the person who created the web pages chooses with whom they are shared.
“We have had a great response from students and are still growing the Hub. For example, we are working on a self-study course showing students how to embed tools in the e-portfolio smartly so they can become more effective learners.”
Brett Lucas, senior learning technologist (policy and change), QMUL
Case study: Buckinghamshire New University – building a professional identity
Post-qualifying students of community public health nursing at Buckinghamshire New University spend 50% of their time under the supervision of a practitioner in the community and 50% on the course.
This hybrid model of learning enables students to develop the wide-ranging skills and knowledge they need as specialist community nurses – but also makes an online personal learning space essential. This is where the different aspects of learning can be pulled together and made sense of, where students can develop their digital and professional identities as well as storing evidence for assessors.
Given the importance of technology in multiple-location learning, Barbara Nicolls, senior lecturer in the university’s learning development unit, argues you need a two-three week induction to develop students’ understanding of how to use e-portfolios for this range of activities before they go out on placement.
In this case, the cloud-based Google Sites is the platform. Its accessibility gives students long-term benefits from their e-portfolios – specialist community public health nurses continue to collect evidence for revalidation once in practice so many find value in evidencing and reflecting on their professional development long after they have qualified.
“Most end up loving the fact that they have created something about themselves and for themselves which can be changed for a different audience and purpose without starting all over again. That’s when the penny drops; e-portfolios have given them control over their professional identity.”
Barbara Nicolls, senior lecturer, learning development unit, Buckinghamshire New University
What I can do
Demonstrating evidence of achievement is an established role for e-portfolios, but there are additional agendas that can be supported by e-portfolio practice. Chief among these is making assessment of skills and aptitudes more authentic, comprehensive, efficient and robust.
As examples, e-portfolios are being used in the assessment of workplace learning in higher and degree level apprenticeships as well as in further education, while the requirement on health professionals to revalidate is driving growth in e-portfolio use for continuing professional development.
To facilitate evidence gathering, assessment and feedback offline from a wide variety of locations, a number of e-portfolio tools including Smart Assessor OneFile and PebblePad are providing apps for offline access.
But e-portfolio tools can also offer a springboard to entirely new approaches to assessment. Our exemplar from Canterbury Christ Church University discusses the viability of delivering and validating the theory elements of a postgraduate course entirely through PebblePad workbooks – a multiple-page, portfolio-like facility designed to deliver content, often interactive in nature and in multiple templates, for learning, revision or assessment (see these examples).
Equally pioneering is the programme-level assessment tool developed for Sheffield Hallam University’s paramedics to test how far knowledge and understanding derived from individual modules have prepared students for the workplace.
Work on open badges and digital certification is another innovation by which individual learners can demonstrate their capabilities through e-portfolios, even taking charge of their own career progression in the process.
But one of the most established approaches in our exemplars is awarding credits to e-portfolio-based tasks as part of the overall assessment strategy for a course or module. Doing so prompts learners to see the value of self-regulatory, reflective work and avoids plagiarism by surfacing the processes and experiences they have gone through to complete the assignment.
Read more
Our 2015 technology for employability case studies for HE and FE and skills provide some examples of e-portfolio technology supporting innovative approaches to assessment.
See the City of Glasgow’s employability-focused e-portfolio system for stonemasonry apprentices (FE) and the student-led individually created course (SLICC) at the University of Edinburgh (HE).
Examples of effective practice
Our case studies provide further examples of e-portfolio-based assessment and certification and provide glimpses of potential new developments for the future.
Case study: Canterbury Christ Church University – completing a PGCE course in PebblePad
Student teachers on the 14-19 postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) programme at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) have been pushing the boundaries of assessment and certification by completing the written elements of their course entirely online in PebblePad.
Ten students completed the course in 2017-2018, drawing on content from a range of sources to demonstrate their capabilities as teachers as they worked through structured weekly activities in PebblePad workbooks. In the academic year 2018-2019, there are a further eight humanities students working towards certification.
In this case study, we look into the benefits and some of the issues involved in course delivery via e-portfolio.
“It’s no longer about just completing tasks set by a tutor to acquire a certificate in order to prove your competence. E-portfolio-based learning allows students to make their own choices of content and content platforms. This tells us, and their future schools, so much more about them.”
Geoff Rebbeck, PGCE tutor, Canterbury Christ Church University
Read the Canterbury Christ Church University exemplar in full (pdf).
Case study: Glasgow City College – changing the culture of assessment with digital certification and e-portfolios
In 2018, staff at Glasgow City College took up the challenge of overcoming the technical and cultural issues posed by digital certification. The aim of My Skills, a Ufi-funded project now underway at the college, is to enable learners to use e-portfolios to accredit their learning across a lifetime of learning rather than on an individual course.
Working with technology platforms and service providers APPII and Google, and in conjunction with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), this 18-month long enquiry sets out to demonstrate:
- How digital certificates can be created, managed and used, and
- How access to a personal learning space on a cloud service such as Google can be combined with digital certification to enable learners to certify their identity and qualifications in an efficient, trustworthy, paper-free way
The technical solution could lie in blockchain technology in which encryption and access are controlled by digital keys creating a unique digital signature that verifies the identity of the sender.
But for Joe Wilson, head of the college’s technical and vocational education team, this is not just about technology. The really tricky thing, he says, is facilitating the cultural and organisational change you need to make good use of the technology:
“Currently, the great majority of all education and training provision in the UK certifies the achievement of learning outcomes using paper certificates. This is a slow and cumbersome process that is out of alignment with the digital world we are preparing learners for. What we need is a quick, easy and trusted way of digitally certifying both the learner and the excellent work they record in their e-portfolios.”
Joe Wilson, head of technical and vocational education, City of Glasgow College
Case study: Abertay University – building digital and employability capabilities into the curriculum
While completing work placements, students of sports and exercise at Abertay University develop a range of additional skills and capabilities as well as improving their understanding of the curriculum through the integration of reflective e-portfolio-based tasks.
The assessment framework emphasises for students the importance of working on these e-portfolio elements; for example, 50% of the credits awarded on the second year placement module are for the webfolios students assemble while out on placement.
With such a weighting given to the task, by the end of the module students are not only able to make a more informed choice about their future degree and career pathways, they can also demonstrate the higher-order skills of value to future employers.
And the unique ability of e-portfolios to connect disparate elements of learning provides far richer and more authentic evidence of the individual’s capabilities than the paper certificates awarded on completion of an examination.
“It is only by integrating [e-portfolio] use in the curriculum and supporting that with 50% credit in the modules in which it is used that we made a difference to students’ capabilities as reflective professionals.”
Andrea Cameron, dean of school of social and health sciences, Abertay University
Case study: Sheffield Hallam University – assessing programme-level outcomes via e-portfolio
The design of a new BSc. in paramedic science at Sheffield Hallam University, home to paramedic diploma courses since 2003, has prompted fresh thinking about how modular courses are assessed.
As students who were achieving individual module learning outcomes were not always able to meet programme-level outcomes with the same degree of confidence, the BSc. course team has devised a self-assessment tool so that students can measure their own progress against higher-level outcomes.
Now in action, the tool reveals how students feel they are achieving on the course, and thus where additional support is needed. It has also helped to identify which areas of the curriculum need to be strengthened.
“It was not immediately apparent to us to what extent students felt confident in their ability to meet the overarching programme-level outcomes. We needed to develop a system to track the students’ progress towards meeting the higher level outcomes throughout their three-year programme.”
Andrew Kirke, senior lecturer in paramedic science, Sheffield Hallam University
Read the Sheffield Hallam University exemplar in full (pdf).
What I gain as an apprentice
A wide range of tools and platforms for e-portfolio-based learning are being explored to benefit learners on apprenticeship programmes whose dual work/study commitments argue for an efficient approach to evidence collection.
Although the new apprenticeship standards introduced between 2017 and 2020 in England focus on end-point assessment instead of incremental achievement of competencies in e-portfolios, the technology can still be a vital tool for learning.
Apprentices still need to:
- Make connections between theory and practice
- Use rich media to capture evidence
- See at a glance what is completed and what is still outstanding
- Communicate online with their mentors and tutors
- Receive and respond to feedback
- Develop digital capabilities, a key element in their employability and
- Avoid working with bulky paper files
Competency tracking e-portfolio systems designed to support these processes go some way towards enabling richer and more reflective approaches to learning as well as bringing together in one online space the disparate elements of apprentice learning. For example, apprentices may be able to add comments alongside their evidence in several commercial systems.
But activities still need to be built in to motivate learning. Our guides on blended learning and flipped learning for apprentices provide some ideas and resources. Another good reason for “thinking digital” right from the start!
Read more
Our higher level apprenticeship toolkit blended learning page contains a diagram from Manchester Metropolitan University to help you plan the availability of and support for digital tools for your apprenticeship programmes.
Read about Cymru Care Training (CCT)’s digital approach to learning and learning delivery for apprentices in Wales and PROCAT’s implementation of OneFile to enhance the quality of apprentice learning in an English college.
Our apprenticeship toolkit and degree apprenticeship toolkit give even more detail on effective application of digital technologies in apprenticeships.
Examples of effective practice
Here are some further examples of emerging e-portfolio practice in apprenticeship contexts.
Case study: Northumbria University – e-portfolios provide efficiency and effectiveness
Northumbria University has opted to use existing systems as far as possible when resourcing its higher and degree apprenticeship courses so turned to PebblePad to meet the requirements of the new mode of delivery.
Trials proved that PebblePad was appropriate in an apprenticeship context. The tool provides a personal online space for developing and storing reflections; apprentices can also use ATLAS – PebblePad’s active teaching, learning and assessment facility – to share documents with tutors, mentors and employers.
Workbooks can be used to log training hours and meetings with mentors and tutors, while a template can store the evidence of meeting industry standards. These are submitted later for end-point assessment.
In addition, the secure online environment is convenient for apprentices, employers, assessors and auditors alike. A copy of each apprentice’s work is kept in the assessment space so it is always retrievable even if accidentally deleted by an apprentice, and since everything is online, there are no delays.
“The problem of getting material to external examiners is a long-standing issue for universities and the issues are exacerbated when it comes to sharing information with employers. Northumbria has found that the use of PebblePad solves this problem.”
Patrick Viney, senior learning technology adviser (degree apprenticeships), Northumbria University
Read the exemplar in our higher and degree apprenticeships toolkit.
Case study: University of Portsmouth – showcasing management skills with Google
Students on a chartered manager degree apprenticeship at the University of Portsmouth combine workplace learning with day release on campus.
An e-portfolio is a required element of the course; in their e-portfolios, students gather evidence from the workplace and reflect on their skills – a SWOT analysis that progresses from year to year up to end-point assessment.
When required, they put links to their e-portfolios into a Moodle assignment for formative assessment and feedback then, when the e-portfolio is finally completed, for summative assessment and grading.
Reflection is a key part of the assessment, but is not the only skill trainee business managers need. To demonstrate their face-to-face skills, apprentices give a 10-minute presentation on their e-portfolios to their tutor and peers, plus a short video account of what they have learned. This part of the assessment is only made possible by drawing on the reflective analysis stored alongside other forms of evidence in their Google Drive accounts.
Online course developer, Andrew Taggart, says the free cloud-based service combined with G Suite for Education tools has given students experience of a digital environment commonly used in the business world. They are also able to sell themselves and their achievements to future employers.
“Students have, effectively, unlimited cloud storage and their e-portfolios are theirs for life. Before they start, we make sure they understand the sharing and security aspects, and provide them with a template site containing standards to upload their evidence against. After that, they can begin creating something that is both a digital showcase of their capabilities for employers as well as a course assignment.”
Andrew Taggart, online course developer, University of Portsmouth
View the University of Portsmouth degree apprenticeship template.
Case study: Barnsley College – rethinking assessment of work-based learning
Barnsley College’s level 3 and 4 diplomas in digital learning design are delivered in one year, enabling apprentices to be employed alongside their studies in the college’s own digital learning design company.
An efficient approach to assessment is particularly important as full-time apprentices at level 4 have little time to complete additional assignments or learn to use college-owned tools, so the apprentices on this course present the work they have completed for the company as evidence for assessment.
Using Google Apps as an e-portfolio tool also prepares them for technologies they will use in the workplace.
“Work-based learning should be about naturally occurring evidence so qualification units should be assessed holistically to reflect the diversity and complexity of the job.”
Daniel Scott, former course leader and winner of the 2016 Association for Learning Technology (ALT) learning technologist of the year award.
Case study: Solent University – supporting degree apprenticeships with Mahara
From Solent University’s virtual learning environment, Moodle, students are only a click away from their Mahara-based e-portfolios, enabling them to build digital CVs, rehearse job applications and demonstrate achievements for future employers at any stage of their course.
Now a pilot is underway of SmartEvidence, a Mahara feature using competency frameworks for the assessment of degree apprenticeships in biomedical science.
The tool provides opportunities for a reflective commentary plus dialogue with tutors as well as a home for the evidence apprentices use to demonstrate achievement against each standard. A traffic light system linked to an evidence map indicates how far they have come, and which standard they should focus on next.
In response to feedback from university tutors, different submission points have been added to the SmartEvidence system to enable apprentices to forward work for formative assessment and feedback. Draft versions can be unlocked for further development then locked again when the work is presented for summative assessment.
As an open-source tool, development of Mahara is community-led so SmartEvidence is still evolving – only Mahara versions 16.10 and later include competency framework functionality. However, as SmartEvidence can support a wider range of purposes than just recording competency acquisition, its use is set to grow at Solent.
“Mahara at Solent has gone from strength to strength. The tool meets our ambition to support apprenticeships with e-portfolios; its flexibility means it can support students’ personal development through ongoing reflection and competence development yet still provide a showcase for potential employers.”
Edward Bolton, learning technologist, Solent University
What I need others to do
Despite their many potential benefits, e-portfolios are not always plain sailing for learners and their teachers.
Learners need to comprehend fully the reasons why e-portfolios form part of their curriculum. Alumni testimony or prepared templates can inspire learners to get started, but for deeper understanding, a map or diagram of how e-portfolio-based tasks connect with other aspects of the course can provide “see-at-a-glance” evidence of the centrality of e-portfolio practice. Our case study from Nottingham Trent University (below) provides an example.
Few learners arrive on course skilled in reflection or personal development planning, so induction sessions must go beyond the nuts and bolts of the technology. All the evidence shows that learners understand better what is demanded of them if they can develop skills in scaffolded practical activities, preferably in a face-to-face context, before commencing work in earnest on their e-portfolios.
It is particularly important for learners working and studying off campus to acquire a level of e-portfolio literacy. But equally important are the broader digital capabilities all learners need to work and study effectively in the modern age.
Using the same system or suite of tools for both digital capabilities and e-portfolios can help learners get familiar with the technology, as our University of Plymouth exemplar below illustrates. And as a failure to connect with activities can be an indicator of a learner in difficulties, e-portfolio-based assignments can provide an early warning system for personal tutors.
However, the most significant driver for student engagement with e-portfolios is the assessment framework; an appropriate credit weighting clearly places e-portfolio-based tasks at the centre of student learning rather than on the periphery.
Read more
Our 2012 e-portfolio implementation toolkit contains a threshold concept framework for large-scale e-portfolio implementations in universities and colleges backed up by exemplars from the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Examples of effective practice
This section includes initiatives and tips that have helped boost learner engagement with e-portfolios in our exemplar institutions. The downloadable case studies in the preceding sections also include solutions to the challenges often experienced in e-portfolio practice.
Case study: Keele University - establishing skills of reflection
Assessed in their pre-registration year by a portfolio of evidence, pharmacy undergraduates at Keele University work on their reflective skills from the first days of their course.
PebblePad workbooks provide each year group with a scaffolded programme of reflective activities, supported initially by face-to-face training sessions and eventually by e-mentorship as learners progress through their degree.
This careful, incremental approach to skills-building establishes learning through reflection as the norm for pharmacy undergraduates, and provides a good grounding for the reflective practice required by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)’s revalidation framework for pharmacy professionals.
“You can’t expect your students to become independent, competent learners capable of evaluative reflection on their own performance if you don’t show them first how to get there!”
Tracey Coppins, head of health foundation year, Keele University
Case study: Nottingham Trent University – building a professional mindset
The school of animal, rural and environmental sciences (ARES) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) integrates scaffolded reflective tasks in e-portfolios with work placements and taught classes to create a work-integrated curriculum for horticulture students.
A key concept in the framework is progressive development. This means that the focus over a three-year course shifts in line with the level of understanding students are expected to gain from their e-portfolio-based learning, building up from baseline tasks to more demanding evaluation of work placements. By the time of graduation, the framework ensures students have had the opportunity to develop a professional growth mindset.
Responding to a university-wide drive to improve students’ employability, senior lecturer, David Jukes, is adapting the framework to other courses offered by the school, from BSc. (Hons.) degree in food science and technology to the newly emerging T-levels.
“E-portfolios are about process as much as product so learning objectives and assessments should signal the value of skills development. It is the assessment framework, after all, that drives student engagement.”
David Jukes, senior lecturer, school of animal, rural and environmental science, Nottingham Trent University
Read the Nottingham Trent University exemplar in full (pdf).
Case study: University of Central Lancashire - are you DigiReady?
Based in Preston with an increasingly international profile, the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) offers some 400 undergraduate and over 200 postgraduate courses. With such a diverse intake, student digital skills vary widely, some are well prepared for a technology-rich environment, others have little or no experience of digital learning at all.
The solution? DigiReady, a student certification scheme piloted at UCLan during 2019 to enable students to evidence their journeys towards full digital capability in eight core skills based on the learner profile of Jisc’s digital capabilities framework. The eight skills are
- Work safely and securely
- The systems and tech you need for study
- Communicate effectively in a digital world
- Find and create digital resources
- Analyse and present information
- Plan and develop your learning
- Reflect on learning
- Manage your profile
To obtain certification, students work within Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook to build up evidence of their skills. The aim is to capture naturally occurring evidence – for example, in the form of annotated screenshots, audio and video reflections – but quizzes and other forms of interactive content may be needed to demonstrate achievement.
Students then draw on this body of evidence to complete a final assignment, a video or presentation piece. The whole serves as a portfolio showcasing learners’ skills for future employers.
“We expect the introduction of the DigiReady programme will showcase the development of important 21st century skills to employers, stakeholders or course providers.”
Hazel Partington and Jean Duckworth, senior lecturers in the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, UCLan
Read our building digital capability blog post or contact Chris Melia on Twitter: @ChrisLearnTech.
Case study: University of Plymouth – linking in with the tutorial system
The University of Plymouth has launched a suite of toolkits to support the development of the digital capabilities of learners, academic staff and professional services staff. The project has come under the management of the central academic, support, technology and innovation (ASTI) team with the aim of bringing digital capabilities to the fore university wide.
Based on our digital capabilities framework and digital discovery tool, the learner toolkit was developed in a PebblePad workbook by the faculty of business and rolled out in September 2018 for first-year undergraduates.
Emma Purnell, senior learning technologist in the ASTI team, says that a system such as PebblePad makes learners’ experience of using the toolkit anything but passive.
The toolkit involves students in completing an initial self-profiling exercise based on our learner profile before moving into their personal space for reflection and action planning. This prompts them to take up opportunities for skills development that are either built into the curriculum or linked to from the toolkit page.
Interactivity is built in on each page so learners take ownership of their own developmental needs; further self-assessment quizzes enable students to check their developing capabilities before opting to learn more.
The whole suite of resources can be used in a linear way or for point-of-need guidance as required, but the outcomes always come up for discussion in personal tutorials as they provide an indicator of how well students are making the transition into higher education.
“Digital capabilities are part of a student’s preparation for learning and for life. Using PebblePad workbooks for the toolkit introduces students to the platform which they will use later in programme-based e-portfolio initiatives.”
Emma Purnell, senior learning technologist, ASTI, University of Plymouth
View the University of Plymouth’s digital capabilities toolkit.
Further resources
Support from Jisc
All institutions we support have a dedicated relationship manager who can identify appropriate specialist support to develop solutions to your needs. The service is scalable, ranging from a diagnostic meeting, advice and resource signposting, to a more detailed and involved consultative support service.