Chelsea Redger-Marquardt from Wichita University presented at PebbleBash 2024 on ‘ePortfolios go to the Parks: Lessons learning from Honors immersive service-learning and leadership academic program.’ Click here to watch the video with the full transcript or if you’re having trouble viewing the video above.
-START TRANSCRIPT–
And so, together with my colleagues, Doctor. Kimberly Engber and Erin Valentine, we put together this case study looking at a three year journey for a signature experience within the Cohen Honors College, which is how and where we use PebblePad. So the college itself, has about seven fifty undergraduate students. We’re part of a public university, about sixteen thousand, in Kansas, urban serving, and it’s the most diverse university within our state.
So we really have students coming from all different places. And so it’s important for us when we build our experiential learning opportunities to really think about access and to think about making sure folks have a foundational place to start from. And so my goal today is to kind of take you through this and and tell you what Bill’s trip is. And Bill’s trip is a program that was put together in honor of Bill Cohen, who really has believed in I think he was a pebble pad thinker, really, believed in experience and learning and doing and leadership should be for public good.
Right? And how do we make sure students are having those kinds of experiences inside the classroom and beyond? And so it stands for building investment in lifelong leadership and service. So a little play on Bill’s name, but a way for us to think about our leadership students and our honor students in this multi and interdisciplinary space coming together and really trying to learn about who they are and who they are in service.
So the story starts with some context.
So it’s available to all honors students by application.
It is a week long travel experience that happens during our January pre session. So it’s the only course that they have to focus on during that time period.
And it has occurred now three different times, and because of the pandemic at three different national park sites, which was not necessarily the original intention. We finally are, with working with Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and we’ll be starting a multiyear plan with them moving forward.
The course itself is multidisciplinary in and of we need them to understand the broader context, all of the different components that go go into the complex and messy history of our National Park Service and thinking about their role as leaders and as stewards, and as servant leaders.
And so the the PebblePad workbook has served for us a few things. One, it’s become the primary text like a lot of you use for, a course that doesn’t fit neatly into any, one single text and it has let us continue to contribute to our increasing e portfolio usage across the college. So we now bring all of our first year students into the PebblePad space in their first semester. And so it’s giving us a touch point in between kind of when they’re getting to that showcase piece.
-END TRANSCRIPT–
