Discover how TAFE Western Australia transformed student nurse learning by deploying PebblePad and its app PebblePocket across five different colleges.
At the TAFE Directors Australia Convention 2024, Helen Hull – Director of Academic Support at North Metropolitan TAFE (part of TAFE Western Australia) – gave a presentation about the state-wide implementation of PebblePad, the learning journey platform.
In her talk, Helen detailed how she and her committed team deployed PebblePad to support the Diploma of Nursing programme across TAFE’s five geographically dispersed colleges. The main drivers behind the project were to:
- Access the government initiative ‘WA Digital Roadmap’, which focuses on digital reform and accessibility including within the healthcare and education sectors
- Take advantage of the same digital learning platform across the entire state – even if enrolled in different TAFE WA colleges
- Prepare future-ready graduates by providing them with access to a learning technology they may also use in further university studies or work
- Focus on accessibility, sustainability, processes and auditing abilities
- Improve the speed and accuracy of processing students’ clinical hours.
Grant-funded rollout
To kick off the project, a rare decision was taken in the post-COVID world; initial PebblePad staff training would not only be carried out face-to-face but would also include onsite training for all five colleges. This saw some participants travelling thousands of kilometres for a weeklong intensive package that focused on the learning journey platform with firm deliverables.
The approach demonstrated TAFE WA’s strong vision and commitment to time, leading to a Department of Training and Workforce Development grant being awarded for the team’s Action Learning Project to support both travel and workshops. Helen attributes the project’s successful outcome to this important development – as well as the support from PebblePad and the staff’s continued dedication.
Challenges and solutions
To ensure full compliance in the complex landscape of regulations – including healthcare standards, NMBA codes and guidelines, and RTO Standards – TAFE WA commissioned an independent auditor and accreditation specialist to review the PebblePad workbooks and processes prior to going live. The resulting report was glowing and gave the assurance the colleges needed to forge ahead confidently.
Another challenge after completing initial training was maintaining links between the colleges. Spearheaded by the largest college, North Metro, all five colleges are now heavily invested in keeping communication channels open and are in regular contact to share ideas.
Learning journey
From the outset, the student-led workflow adapted through PebblePad has allowed students to flourish in an adult education setting and become independent learners. Liz Mckinley, the internal project lead, commented on not only the students’ but their own learning journey, and the culture of teamwork that was adopted by sharing the building of resources.
Commenting on feedback and assessment – and including students in that loop – Helen also said: “The great advantage is that we can upload work placement assessments such as patient interviews and stress management plans. It means these can be marked in a much timelier manner. These are not the observation checklist rubrics, which are usually done in situ.
“To have instant access to these other assessment types has proven to be very helpful. Also, if any information is missed, the students can upload it themselves from home.”
Implementation & impact
As there are five colleges, it might be misconstrued that they operate as five ‘mini universities.’ However, Helen noted that while North Metro TAFE led the process after the initial training period, they adopted a sharing approach. This meant that those regions with fewer team members could use North Metro TAFE’s tools, especially as they were ahead in their own timeline.
Each of the five colleges also had its own region in ATLAS (PebblePad’s assessment engine). This ensured that while the colleges could share resources collaboratively, they could also operate autonomously.
Another design choice made during the implementation stage was to use PebblePad’s mobile app PebblePocket. This enabled appropriate healthcare professionals taking part in in situ assessments of student competencies at the bedside to digitally sign any outcomes. A signed assessment could then be added to student workbooks later.
Revealing results
A post-implementation survey was carried out with industry, collating feedback about PebblePad, which underlined the ability of the platform to provide assessment in higher education. Here are some of the highlights:
- “Easy access and quick resulting. Can update from anywhere.”
- “No forgotten books. Access from home.”
- “I find that is a good way to quickly access all student placement tools without needing the physical paperwork, actually very easy to use.”
- “It was extremely user friendly. It is sustainable as it’s online and the students found it easy to use.”
- “Everything is in one place and it’s not paper based.”
Future directions
North Metro TAFE is now about to see its first full set of students graduate out of the programme that utilised PebblePad. They have made tweaks and adjustments along the way to the main clinical component and, as a side project, have also fully implemented Simulation Laboratory workbooks for students to use prior to practice.
Importantly, Helen and her team recognised that education of all the different types of users is key to success, as is access to support. This led to the setting up of a dedicated email address that anyone – student, staff or external clinicians – could contact if they needed help.
There was also discussion of creating a new online workbook to house all required education and internal processes in a one-stop shop moving forward. A feature was also introduced for those receiving the workbook to add comments and rate themselves.
This feeds into the continuous improvement loop that TAFE WA set out to achieve. Finally, there are other projects in the pipeline including an electronic Duty of Care logbook… so watch this space.
Practical considerations
Helen highlights the importance of pre-planning. Mapping out what is needed before beginning and bringing together resources (often paper-based and already in existence) are essential for securing big wins in digital environments and learning technologies deployment.
Finally, for other institutions and regions facing any challenges developing PebblePad-based digital work placement tools for nursing education, internal project lead Liz Mckinley simply said to “give them my email address” if they have any queries or need advice. I think this sentiment echoes throughout our PebblePad community and that all institutions are happy to help and guide others to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Drawing conclusions
The statewide approach taken by TAFE WA was driven by a number of factors. The main aims around sustainability and accessibility were met, but there were also some unforeseen benefits. These included the ability to quickly and easily identify whether students or assessors – either internal or out in the industry – had missed anything at any point.
Also, the ability to have five colleges all working from the same master workbook before making it unique to their own setting was cited as the moment when the project came to life. This sharing culture has been nurtured and maintained by regular check-in meetings.
The assessment and feedback process has met all requirements as well, leading to greater efficiencies and accuracy around the recording of clinical hours. Importantly, the colleges continue to move away from ‘tick-box exercises’. Instead, assessors can now give rich feedback with students leading the process and taking responsibility for their own learning journeys.
Finally, the learning curve for new users and facilitators when deploying learning technologies will always need to be managed. However, there are already new ideas for how this can be accomplished through PebblePad because of the ePortfolio platform’s versatility. It’s important to note, too, that TAFE WA has a culture of continuous improvement and expansion, so we can’t wait to hear about what comes next!
