It's easy to be wise in hindsight - planning to overcome obstacles

Lilian Austin & Terry Young La Trobe University

When Students Revolt

How do we avoid this?

Activity – Subject in ATLAS

Scenario 1Email from student Mursel – 29th Nov Dear LecturerNot sure if you received my email yesterday regarding the submission of my Task 1. I have tried again this morning and Pebble Pad still will not allow me to submit it, as it says that I can’t submit. I have taken a screen capture of my first blog so that you can see I am not lying and also the message that PebblePad gives me every time I try to submit. It doesn’t matter what I do but the system won’t accept it. I am panicking, as I really want to pass.Yours Annabel

Scenario 2Email from student Janet – 2nd Dec.

Hi there,Can you please help me? I’ve had a few problems with PebblePad. The first issue is that I submitted my blog to ATLAS but I received a message from PebblePad that it is pending? What does that mean? When I look in ATLAS it isn’t there.

The other issue is that I had to write 3 posts on the blog. I did this ok for the first two blogs but the last one just doesn’t appear in the blog in PebblePad even though I have saved it each time. It is really important that this one appears as I wrote a lot more for this for this one and I think it is my best post. I have saved and saved the post using the disk icon and it doesn’t seem to go into the blog. I really want you to be able to read this one as I think it will be a good mark.Ben

Scenario 3

Email from student Ricardo – 3rd Dec

I have been working on my webfolio all weekend and I am so stressed because PebblePad does not allow me to save my pages in ATLAS. Only the first page is saving but all the others have been completed and now the due date is passed. I can see everything in PebblePad. I promise I did all the work on time but I can’t get the saving to work in ATLAS. What should I do? I have included an image of the second page to prove that I have done it.

How do we avoid these situations?

Academics

• Some academics do not use Pebble+, only ATLAS. Hence, are not conversant with PebblePad

• Some academics do not understand the mechanics of PebblePad as it is different to the LMS.

Students

• Conceptual misunderstandings ie. The submission is live’’, do I need to resubmit?

• Students do not understand the copy and submit concept

• Students too often do not read instructions

Possible solutions

Student self-paced tutorial

PebblePad/ATLAS quiz in LMS

Problem solving/scenarios workshop for staff

Student Support

• More training for Frontline Student IT Support to deal with basic mistakes

Support materials contextualised to the assessment task

Planned Solutions

• Online FAQ “when things go wrong”• Mandatory testing for new learning designs• Training for faculty admin support staff

ie. Enrolments, triage issue

Sustainability

• How do we build in sustainable solutions so support is minimized?

• As we increase institutional use of the PebblePad, how do we scale the support?

• Identify roles and responsibilities for each part of the process?