Challenge

Preparing health service management students to transition out of the university and to successful employment is enhanced through a work integrated learning placement. Students in their final year learn about themselves, their profession and through experiential learning in a health setting, are more prepared for the world of work. The Career Development and Employability Curriculum Framework, outlines the role of recording student actions, such as professional development planning, engaging with industry and achieving mastery and employability, through a portfolio.

While on placement students practice the theory and knowledge gained at University and learn about the role of the health service manager in practice. Reflection is a necessary skill for the Griffith Graduate to take forward into their professional careers. Learning how to reflect, what to reflect on, documenting new and transferable skills, understanding their experiences on placement and the next steps for professional development and employment could be supported in a structured workbook.

I wanted to improve the quality and quantity of student reflections and assess these as part of my course. Assessment of student’s reflections was able to be achieved through a PebblePad workbook.

Approach

A PebblePad workbook was created. The workbook has been structured to capture reflections on how students navigated the world of work, communication and interaction in the workplace, getting the work done, thinking creatively, planning and organising, solving problems and working collaboratively. Students are also asked to think about their future professional and career development steps to prompt them taking the next steps and a plan for after graduation.

Outcomes

Students are now required to think in a more focussed and critical way about their reflections and their future plans. Through the workbook, students reflect on both positive and negative aspects of placement, their own strengths and weaknesses and a plan for addressing these through ongoing professional development.

Alisha Vaz offers her thoughts about the PebblePad workbook below:

Enabling Technology

The following technology was used in creating the workbook:

• PebblePad
• Atlas

See also:

• Pebblepad (Fact sheet). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.
• Pebblepad (Module). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

Implement

I attended the PebblePad training and the workshops offered by Griffith. These workshops and a showcase was very helpful in understanding how I could use PebblePad in my teaching and to support student learning. The software has quite a different look, feel and terminology to other packages used for teaching and learning and the face to face training allows you to ask questions and understand how the tool can be used.

There are plenty of resources to assist academics and students, so make use of these. I also recommend that you ask questions and seek assistance from Learning & Teaching Consultants who have always made time to assist me.

Next Steps

I plan to take on board the feedback from students in this Trimester’s offering and to see if there is an improvement in the quality and quantity of reflections. By using PebblePad I will also be able to leverage the analytics available through Atlas to understand where student gaps in preparation for Work Integrated Learning and their experiences might be occurring.

Griffith Graduate Attributes

This resource directly aligns to the following graduate attribute:

• Effective communicators and collaborators

By recording their reflections, students developed their ability to communicate effectively in written form.

Support Resources

• Employability Framework

  Career Development and Employability Curriculum Framework

• Reflective Writing

  Griffith Library Resources On Reflective Writing

• PebblePad

  Learning Futures PebblePad

Contributed by

• Griffith Health
  School of Medicine
  Sheree Lloyd
  (07) 373 53256
  s.lloyd@griffith.edu.au
  http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5135-4771
  Griffith Experts profile
• Learning Futures
  

Preferred Citation

Lloyd, C., and Learning Futures (2020). Developing Reflective Skills Using PebblePad. Retrieved from https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/entry/7026/view