Dr Sarah Burkhard and Angela Cleary from University of the Sunshine Coast on ‘Preparing for and Supporting Placement.’ in Allied Health. This recording is from our 2022 Brisbane, Australia MiniBash community event. Videos are for educational personnel only and require a live educational email to watch. You can read the video transcript below.
Transcript:
And just having a bit of a wardrobe malfunction with the mic.
Thank you, Carol. And thanks, PebblePad and everyone else for being here today, too.
The last time I was at a PebblePad event, I think, was PebbleBash.
Twenty nineteen. Eighteen. Eighteen. Oh, that’s even even further back.
And it was really inspiring. And I think this morning has been exactly the same. Ang and I were just saying at lunchtime, we don’t know how we can really back that up after seeing such wonderful presentations.
So Hopefully, we can oh, here we go. Andrew and I are gonna talk today a little bit about our journey. So we only have ten minutes so we won’t be jumping into too much detail but we wanted to just, I guess, set the scene in how Within our discipline at USC, we are trying to use PeoplePad and thinking about that through the first year to third or fourth year depending on the program we’re talking about. Oops. Sorry.
Oh, I think it’s gone loads and loads for you.
Oops. It’s going the wrong way.
It’s a bit siddly.
I guess while while we get the the technology sorted too.
I just wanted to say thank you as well to the broader PebblePad team and some of our colleagues at USC who have supported this work too. So while Ang and I are here, we’re not the only ones who have done this.
So we’re going to talk through the learning journey, and I’m gonna talk through the first few years.
And focus more on the flipped classroom, service learning and using blogs.
And then I’ll pass to end who’s one of our placement coordinators and she’ll tell you a little bit about how we’re using people in those final years for our students.
Now let’s see if we can get just one.
Okay. So There is a lot of information on this slide, but I guess I just wanted to put this up here to show that it’s been quite a process.
In terms of how we’ve started to use Pebble And when we did start using PebblePad, I guess we were a little bit unconventional because we didn’t see it as an portfolio tool.
We kind of saw it as this really interesting online tool that maybe we could put some learning materials into and use it as a teaching tool as such.
So we really took that and we’re working with a flipped classroom approach. So have really moved across the years to not just use people as an e portfolio, but also use it with the workbook so that students had all of the content and all of the activities and the assessment that they did all in that for the flipped classroom.
So of course we’re now past twenty twenty and I was just saying to Shane at lunchtime that what we had done pre COVID was actually really useful for us when we did hit COVID and we had to make changes.
And just to tell you a little bit about some of the ways that we’re using PeoplePad in our undergrads in our first couple of years. And this is one of the examples of the digital workbooks that we’re using for the flipped classroom.
So you can see on the the menu on the left hand side there, it drops down. So each week within this course had one tab which had pre class learning activities during class learning activities and post class learning activities and the students would do all of their work within their and then submit it for assessment and this has had some really great feedback from students particularly because they liked having everything in one place and the fact that they could come into class and we might be doing activities, we would link the slides to match what was in the work so they could sit there with their computers open and they could pop in responses to their questions as we worked through activities.
I think we’ve gone. Sorry. Jump to hit again.
Just quickly on the previous page too before I hand and Another way that we’re trying to use and get the students familiar with PebblePad is through blogging. So one of our courses and what’s going on self now.
One of our courses is tober. In first year, we actually get our students to do an eco friendly food challenge and within that they do a blog about their three week experience.
And we used to have a lot of trouble in thinking about do we get them to present that blog because of course some were really happy to go online for the world to see what they were working on. Others weren’t so keen So when we found that we could do this within people, it seemed like a really natural fit. So the students create their blogs and their They share them the other students. We can teach them to go through Atlas and provide comments on each other’s blogs as well and they seem to really enjoy that.
And then one third example of how we’re using this too. This comes courtesy of doctor Jude Mah, who’s teaching our third year advanced public health nutrition course.
Well, it’s still going. Thanks, Ang.
Where she’s using a portfolio as well. These are third year students to work out, I guess, their reflections and the process they’re going through doing their service learning project as well and from our discussions with her, the feedback seems quite positive from her students as well.
So I guess I’m thinking about that before I passed to end. I know it’s been a really quick whip through.
Why use these for students? So from the student perspective, these are some of the things that we’ve heard from our group, and some of this has come from some research we’ve published, but also some from work, I guess just going in and talking to the students, getting the feedback at the end of semester.
So workbook design, encouraging participation and learning activities.
That it’s quite novel, but I must say that when that comment was put forward, we had Blackboard, and we have now changed to Canvas.
So might not be exactly the same as what they were thinking. But they did really like the fact that people was really creative and that they could while they were given some stress to work with were able to get in there and kind of take that and make it their own.
They liked the content, which is probably good considering that we had tried to do engaging content for them.
But when we did this particular research too, we did get a couple of comments saying from students that you know it’s really difficult to get my head around. I don’t know how to use it. How do I submit and so on? So I think we will link back into that when we talk about some reflections at the and around students using them, but I will pass to Edge.
Do you want me to do your jump forwards? You’ve already done it. So I’m going to talk about fast. I’m going to talk about work integrated learning, the placement for nutrition and dietetic.
A bit different to some of the other courses we heard about this morning. We do all of our placement in the final year. So in dietetics, that’s in fourth year, in nutrition, it’s in third year. So we’re using Pebblepad across both programs in all work integrated learning courses, We have probably been using it since about two thousand and sixteen, so a little bit after Sarah, she started it, and then we jumped on board.
And we’ve adapted it along the way. And we’ve kind of worked out We can have the one template and kind of adapt it to the different settings that we need. Jump forward, which I think were my points there. Yeah.
So being able to and what we’ve worked out this way this year as well is to that we can also link the work books to the workspace, which we’ve found really great, which I’ll talk a bit more about on the next slide.
So why use pebblepad in the work integrated learning, all of our assessment in will is is passfail, and it’s all linked to competency development.
So we guide the students to upload evidence to demonstrate that competency.
We allow students to do the self assessment of their competency over the over the course of the course.
And also for the academic supervisors to give feedback as well.
So we really find that it’s good to have both the feedback and the reflective practice in the one space.
We can also log hours on there, which is good for the nutrition program. And the real highlight for us is that transition, moving away from university into the workplace. So motivating the students to manage their own portfolio and track their progression and their assessment across time. But in saying that what we’ve found is the more simple the workbook, the better, so they’re happy to do it, but don’t make it too difficult.
So the other thing is that it is a portfolio and that it’s all in the one space. So We can track the progression. It makes the marking efficient. Now it is only pass fail, but it makes it a lot easier that it’s all in the one place.
And then the academics and the students, we can all access it after the course is finished as well. So it’s really a filing system as well.
So the benefits of this standard template that we’ve found that it works when it works well, you don’t need to change it. So we’ve just been able to adapt it to the different courses, and then the students become really familiar with it as well over time.
And also, it saves us time when we’re building it for the next semester as well, and then we’re getting feedback from lots of different students so we can adapt it as it goes.
So linking it to the one workspace, it also promotes the collaboration between the placement team, so the academic we all work together, we can see what each other is feeding back.
We can see if the students have made changes from the feedback across the time, and if we’re giving the same similar feedback.
And I think we can go to the next one.
Do you wanna wrap it up? I can do it. You can.
Sarah’s going to wrap it all up with the reflection.
Okay. So I guess as I was alluding to an Ang has made as well through her slides.
There we do have quite a few reflections on what has worked and what hasn’t worked.
And I guess we do have quite a unique cohort, so these might not be transferable across to all groups.
But we have found like Ang mentioned the more simple, the better. So really spending time thinking about layout and thinking about how can that be simplified even more for the student. And I think that’s a challenge because sometimes you feel like you want to be in there making everything look pretty and there’s so much you can do. You have to hold back a little bit it’s really great for having that everything in one location, the one stop shop. And I think what’s really inspiring this morning is hearing about the mapping and the potential for linking and things like this. And I think we have a bit of thinking to do about that into that bigger workbook around tracking that it does help in terms of efficiency around marking and getting your templates ready for the next semester.
The more you can use it, the more confidence it seems to develop in students and academic and I think for us that’s been quite challenging if you have students using it one semester and then it’s not used again for a couple of semesters and they have to revisit that as well.
You can make it look really visually appealing which I think our students tend to like that. They can make things look nice and be quite proud of the work that they have.
It does promote that transition from university to workforce.
We found to with the flipped classroom that you tended to get higher attendance rates and that the students because the format was there to do things before they came to class they would actually do those.
And it can increase our awareness of at risk students as well to try and just give them tap on the shoulder before we notice other things.
But some of those reflections, as I’ve heard this morning too, a significant time involvement is needed, so I know not just the time thinking it through, but the time of planning and actually doing that in people.
I think you need to be quite clear in terms of the mapping and thinking about the constructive alignment knowing where to access help is really important and I think particularly from the student perspective because they want it fixed half an hour ago and if you don’t know how to fix it, you know, it’s trying to find someone to help them so that they don’t have that, I guess, idea that people is really difficult or it’s not going to work. They just need some help with that.
And it has helped, I think, in terms of adapting to changing alimony and systems as well. So having thought through how we use people has made that a little bit easier in some ways, but then I think has opened up other challenges for us to think about how to do that.
And we have put a little in the future box there I think after talking to Carol on Friday and hearing things this morning as well about really thinking about how we incorporate that across the course, all the programs that we have and how do we bring together because some of these things are sitting a little bit, I guess, in isolation.
But with that, we’re probably over time or on time been really quick. Thank you.
