The Lessons and Challenges of Implementing an Electronic Portfolio to a BSc (Hons) Nursing Programme Fiona Powling and Libs Browne May 2014

Our Story So Far In brief! What's involved in going from paper CAP to virtual reality? Where are we right now? What are the lessons and challenges so far?

E-portfolio feedback Exerts from students e-portfolios: ‘I believe the length of the placement and the spokes worked very well and the use of PebblePad was excellent so easy to use and better than paper portfolio`s.’ – Mentors entry ‘…..my mentor then went on to say that she has really enjoyed using Pebblepad, I am glad she has found it as good a bit of software as myself’ – Student entry ‘I have had a positive experience with PebblePad and one of my mentors had said she had not liked the idea but by the time my placement ended, she had changed her mind!’ - Student entry

Our Mentors are great! Mentors have taken to the changes well in spite of the current NHS climate Most mentors are more IT literate than they let themselves believe, and can navigate the site easily and find it reasonably intuitive PebblePad training sessions are informing the content of the annual mentor updates

Lessons from our mentors Mentors are not always clear about the assessment standards. Clearer & easier for mentors to review Accountability issues in mentoring Highlights mentors timely approach to completing the assessment process Mentors now more confident in managing the Base and Spoke model

Lessons from our Students Most Students are becoming confident in managing and maintaining their portfolio. With some students there is a gap about the content and what the purpose of a portfolio is actually about. Descriptive account of activity vs. account of their learning from the activity

Lesson from Academic staff First submissions are yet to show how link lecturers/personal supervisors use the information. Highlighted the need for learning outcomes to be clearly linked to the evidence in the portfolio Need to encourage students to utilise the aspects in the portfolio as a learning tool eg. Reflections, other activities, and linking the NMC outcomes to this learning (McCready 2007)

Challenges –moving forward IT access in the workplace Need time to fully integrate and learn the value of the portfolio as an educational tool - Garret et al (2013) point out that there can be an over emphasis on the technical aspects of change management rather than educational and learning needs of the student for assessment purposes