Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in undergraduate Digital Design

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1 Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in undergraduate Digital Design Summary First year undergraduate students from a number of Digital Design programmes were required to maintain a reflective blog in PebblePad; while third year students completed a webfolio as part of their assessment for the Level 6 module Professional Creative Practice. Technologies used PebblePad Level 4 Background and Methodology The Level 4 module Contexts & Communication is delivered in Semester Two to students on all Digital Design Programmes: Games Design, Digital Animation, Web Design, and Digital Media Production. The Module Study Guide provided a brief introduction to PebblePad, and the Technology Enhanced Learning Manager came into class in Week 2 to demonstrate the software to the students. Assessment The module has three assignments, of which the first (weighted 30%) requires students to produce a portfolio of 5 short written pieces demonstrating a variety of writing skills: 1. Library exercise (find all the required items and write a few sentences justifying your choice) 2. Précis a magazine article 3. Précis a peer reviewed full text journal article (ebscohost etc) 4. Write a Review (film, animation, game or website according to your studies) Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 1 08/02/2012

2 5. Write a short argument: for and against e.g. playing violent video games makes us more violent In previous years these had had been word processed and submitted as hard copy. For students were required to submit the work as a digital portfolio, using a simple PebblePad Blog. Level 6 Background and Methodology The Level 6 module Professional Creative Practice is also delivered across all Digital Design Programmes and aims to help students prepare for gaining employment in the creative industries. Again the Module Study Guide, and Module Blackboard site, provided help on using PebblePad, and a member of the TEL team went into class to introduce students to the software. As with the Level 4 Module, this was a fairly general introduction to the software; the lecturer provided all other guidance and support to the students. The Module lecturer, Jane Dunstan, also produced a webfolio as an example of what students should aim to produce, and what their webfolio should include. This was made available to the students via a Gateway. Assessment There were two parts to the assessment for this module. Assignment 1 (weighted 60%) required the use of PebblePad: Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 2 08/02/2012

3 Creation of student Portfolio/Showreel/Demo containing subject specific work (films, animations, web sites, games designs etc) In class presentation PebblePad submission All of your online and offline work will be shown, or linked to, in your PebblePad web folio Your whole portfolio may be across many different platforms (Facebook page, portfolio site for photographs, YouTube channel for videos etc). However they must be referenced (and linked) in your PebblePad web folio for marking and external examining. The external examiner does not know you or your work, so make everything in your portfolio available, labelled and easy to find. The students were also asked to complete a Graduate Skills profile within PebblePad and to insert this within their webfolio. Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 3 08/02/2012

4 Issues encountered Viewing and grading student work Although a Gateway had been set up on the Level 6 Module in order to share the example webfolio, students were not asked to send their completed webfolios to the Gateway, but simply shared them with the lecturer. In retrospect, this was a mistake, as it was difficult for the lecturer to keep track of the s generated by PebblePad each time a student webfolio was shared with her (there were around 60 students on the Level 4 Module, and over 40 on the Level 6 Module). Many students didn t label their work properly, which made it difficult for the lecturer to search through her received assets to find one she wanted it is possible to search received assets by keyword but this does not seem to search the title field. And although the lecturer received an when an asset had been shared with her, this is not an appropriate way of keeping track of who shared the asset and therefore who has submitted work. Students don t get an acknowledgement that the asset has been shared so may be anxious about this. There were issues with access for second markers and external examiners students shared their work with Jane, but unless they gave her cascade permissions she could not then provide other markers with access to the students assets. Use of a Gateway would have addressed all of these issues, providing a simpler mechanism for tracking which students had submitted their webfolio, for viewing and grading the student work, and providing access to all of those involved in the marking and moderation process. On the Level 4 assignment, it was easy for the lecturer to mark work when students had typed text direct into their blog (or copied and pasted from Word). However some students had simply attached a Word document to each week s blog post this was inconvenient for the lecturer as she had to download and view five separate files for each student. On the Level 6 webfolio, the way the lecturer s Mac internet browser dealt with links on the students webfolio was not user friendly, with multiple tabs opening, not always in the most obvious window (it would be worth experimenting with browsers to see which handles this best). Uploading files Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 4 08/02/2012

5 On both Modules students had to create and submit a PowerPoint presentation as part of their assessment. It had been intended that these PowerPoint files would be uploaded via PebblePad. However, in view of the problems outlined above and the fact that PebblePad will only accept files up to 10Mb Jane decided that physical handin on CD would be a safer, more reliable method. Student attitudes These students almost universally did not like the PebblePad interface, which they viewed as clunky, not nicely designed, and too restrictive (this was not helped by the fact that the software was also new to Jane, so she wasn t able to provide as much technical support as she would have wished). Benefits On the Level 4 Module it was good that student work was all in one place, and that the lecturer could monitor students progress through semester. Previously it was just handed in at end of the semester in hard copy. PebblePad made it possible for Jane to be able to see a time and date stamp on students blog posts to confirm that the student had been doing the work regularly through the Module, not writing all of the entries at the last minute. She would use PebblePad again for this Module in future. Students who have had experience of using PebblePad at Level 4 will have the option of continuing to use it for reflection through all three years of their course, and will know that at any time they need to create a blog, PebblePad provides this option. On the Level 6 Module, from the tutor s perspective the use of a PebblePad webfolio was really good. Previously students would have submitted their work on disc, with one or more word processed document containing links to their work on sites such as YouTube. Now all of these links are brought together. The use of PebblePad on Professional Creative Practice served several purposes: o to have a portfolio o to have an assessment which required students to present evidence of having been to the Careers Service, to produce a business card, employment plan etc. o through the Graduate Skills section for students to reflect on their skills and provide evidence of where they had acquired them (this could be a link to a blog they re maintaining outside PebblePad). PebblePad met the first two of these, but a lot of students did not really engage with the Graduate Skills profile. Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 5 08/02/2012

6 Ideally all Level 6 students would be able to create really well designed websites to present their work, but not all have been taught these skills (this depends on which Programme they are enrolled on). There was a mix of abilities in terms of web design some students had very web design advanced skills, others very few skills in this area. The latter were grateful that PebblePad provided a relatively simple means of presenting their work via the web. The use of PebblePad was particularly welcome in because a departmental server previously used for students to upload their work was no longer available. Lessons learned The chief lesson was that having a Gateway set up for each Module would greatly simplify staff access to the students work, and aid the assessment process. The TEL team can set up any required Gateways, and provide guidance on how best to use them to deploy resources and collect student work. For design students PebblePad is not really a suitable platform to create a publicfacing portfolio, which could be presented to employers; and it s not worth the students spending a lot of time on the design of their PebblePad webfolio. In future Jane will sell PebblePad to students more as a content management tool, allowing them to collect all of their work in one place this is useful both for the students and their lecturers. Next Steps Use of PebblePad in Semester Jane Dunstan is no longer the module leader on Contexts & Communication. However she will be using PebblePad, with a Gateway for assessment of students portfolios, on the Level 6 Professional Creative Practice module. The TEL Consultant/Developer for the School of Arts Media & Design will be going into class to talk to the students in week 2. Case Study: PebblePad blogs and webfolios in Digital Design 6 08/02/2012