Langara’s pilot of the ePortfolio learning platform, PebblePad, is now in its second year. This will be the first in a series highlighting some of the platform’s features. Whether you’re already using PebblePad or considering using it at some point in the future, our hope is that the PebblePad Briefs extend your understanding of the platform’s capabilities.
Our first “Brief” is going to focus on what components you can include in learning materials. Although ePortfolio (electronic/digital portfolio) technology is a tool for students to showcase their work, that’s not all PebblePad can do. In fact, it’s also a great platform to build scaffolded learning activities.
When building learning resources in PebblePad, content can be multimodal and responses can be dynamic. A learning activity, for example, might have text for students to read, a podcast for them to listen to, and a video for them to watch. You could then add interactive fields for the students to respond to this content by checking their comprehension, rating their response, reflecting on what they’ve learned, or planning their next steps – all on the same page (or in a separate tab or resource if you’d prefer).
Content types that can be added to a learning resource include:
- text
- image
- audio
- video
- links to other resource
Interactive response fields that can be added for students to actively engage in learning can include:
- text fields (single or multi-line)
- radio buttons (one answer only), checkboxes (multiple answers possible) or drop-downs
- ratings (binary, Likert, numeric)
- fillable tables
- rubrics
- add evidence buttons (allows comment or file upload)
- date pickers
- signature fields
Those at Langara already using PebblePad have provided feedback that the templates look great and, even more importantly, students find them easy to use.
It’s also easy to share these learning resources with your students… but we’ll leave that for another PebblePad Brief.
If you have questions about PebblePad or any other learning technology that EdTech supports, we can be contacted at edtech@langara.ca
