In this spotlight series we highlight experts in our team from across the globe. To round up the series, our final spotlight is on Carole Hunter, Customer Success Manager and Learning Consultant. Carole is based in Australia.
What is your role at PebblePad and what is your background?
My role is customer success manager and learning consultant. I’ve been working in higher education for over 20 years. I was originally a teacher and then moved into a learning design role, working across most disciplines including business, journalism and agriculture.
Before joining PebblePad my main role was co-leading large scale online design initiatives, encouraging academics to rethink how they were teaching in the online space.
What would you say you’re most passionate about in Higher Education?
If I had to pick one thing, it would be designing experiences that help students explore their professional values and roles, what they want to contribute through their chosen profession – their professional identity.
So many students leave university still not being sure of their place and what they have to offer; that’s why providing spaces where students can reflect and have conversations around this is incredibly empowering.
What do you love most about PebblePad?
As a learning designer, I think what I love most about PebblePad is the customisation.
It is the most versatile platform; you can customise it to meet so many different learning needs. The technology moulds itself to your way of teaching and learning and I think that is so incredibly powerful.
Many say the LMS is the foundational learning system in a university and it’s not, or shouldn’t be – it’s a foundational management system.
PebblePad is a foundational learning system.
It’s a system that will take students: from one subject to another subject, making connections between subjects, working across disciplines, engaging in co-curricular activities and workshops or personal tutoring, working with industry partners, and working with supervisors on placements.
Also documenting and evidencing extracurricular learning whether that’s an internship that they’ve initiated themselves or even learning a new language.
It offers a space for students to connect all those different components of their individual learning journeys, and that’s where you start to see real transformation.
It’s lovely to work with a platform that you totally believe in it; it’s not something that you have to sell in any way. And it keeps improving, we have such good processes in place for the continued evolution of the platform.
I started working with PebblePad in 2008 and it’s changed a lot since then, but there’s a consistency in the underlying philosophy. It’s grounded in solid pedagogy, with a consistent focus on student-centred learning, and that’s what I love.
