Fink (2013) emphasizes the creation of significant learning experiences that engage learners, with Gibbs (1988) highlighting the importance of what students do (as opposed to what the teacher does). Feedback is vital to student learning; however for feedback to be useful, students need to engage with it, reflect on it and ideally be able to use the feedback to improve their work (Gibbs & Simpson 2005). Having seen how the instructional designer David Watson used Padlet to present a portfolio of his work (Hopkins, 2015), this sparked an idea of how Padlet could be used both as a platform for Business Administration students to showcase their project work and as a means to encourage students to engage fully with formative feedback.
First year Business Administration students are required to produce a portfolio of business documents over the course of one term. In previous academic years, they submitted the documents through Blackboard and received feedback (a grade and written comments) but were not required to resubmit their work. However, the students did not engage with the feedback to try and improve their work.
This academic year students submitted through Blackboard as before, but received formative feedback via comments and a rubric. They were then required to use this feedback to self-assess and enhance their learning before creating an ePortfolio of their work on Padlet. Students were, in part, motivated to improve their documents as their ePortfolio was more public and could be easily shared with potential employers.
The above refinement of the production of a portfolio of business documents is a shift from assessment of learning to an increased emphasis on assessment for and as learning, with the inherent benefit of encouraging student self-regulation of their learning. We will discuss the impact and benefits of incorporating Padlet into the assessment, along with issues that arose, and the affordances and limitations of the Padlet platform for use as a basic ePortfolio.
References
Gibbs G (1988) Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods
Gibbs G & Simpson C (2005) Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and teaching in higher education, (1), 3-31
Fink D L (2013) Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses
Hopkins D (2015) Showcasing different approaches to building a CMALT portfolio ALT Online Winter Conference 2015 [https://altc.alt.ac.uk/online2...]
Topics: Assessment and feedback in a digital age , Topics: Digital technologies in disciplinary contexts
