Author: Linsey Duncan-Pitt, linsey.duncan-pitt@wlv.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: e-Portfolios

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Health Sciences and Practice

This case study illustrates...an effect on learning, an effect on student personal development, student satisfaction with e-learning, innovation in learning and teaching, staff personal development, a positive effect on recruitment, an influence on policy, use of resources, modifications to learning spaces, management of learning assets, an effect on social equality

Technology Used

What technologies and/or e-tools were available to you?

The literature has examples of using email, web-based discussion boards (in or outside of VLE/MLEs) and chat rooms to develop online communities of practice, although these are not well reported in the healthcare profession's literature. Our institutional VLE had in-built discussion tools but these were limited in that they could be created within a topic but could not be integrated alongside content. This functionality was later added. In contrast, the e-portfolio system offered a 'kit' of features which were felt to be most conducive to online learning community support, in particular the provision for each user to set up a blog space without any institutional intervention. Unlike the VLE, the e-portfolio system facilitated the setting of more sophisticated privacy settings when sharing material with others. The system used is called PebblePad and was developed by a team comprising staff, ex-staff and ex-students of the institution with significant pedagogical input from teaching colleagues and their students. Pebble Learning is now a commercial company. There were no institutional restrictions on the choice of tools to support these learners. The institution does have a minimum quality standard in respect of e-learning support - all modules must have a minimum presence in the VLE of a module guide, but development of support for modules is pedagogically driven. All modules across the nursing and midwifery programmes have multimedia materials embedded in the VLE. Current imperatives driving the use of e-portfolio across the wider School of Health population of students and staff are those of the wider national and international agendas JISC (2006) but at the outset these were not considerations.