picture of three smiling Duke undergraduate students

ePortfolios

PebblePad was adopted at the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year as the university’s ePortfolio tool. PebblePad allows students, faculty and staff to create websites, blogs and reflections to share privately or publish for public audiences such as potential employers.

An example of a PebblePad eportfolio

In the 2017-2018 year, Learning Innovation continued outreach to encourage the Duke community to explore eportfolios for advising, teaching and sharing their own educational and professional experiences. This year 2,958 individuals at Duke used PebblePad and logged into the site to work on portfolios a total of 22,100 times. Average weekly logins doubled from the 2016-2017 to the 2017-2018 academic year. PebblePad use has steadily increased since its launched at Duke in 2016.

PebblePad logins increased steadily from 2016 to 2017

All master’s students at both the Duke School of Nursing and Duke Divinity School use PebblePad to track their learning. PebblePad is used by undergraduates in the International Comparative Studies certificate program, and students majoring in English, Religion and Middle Eastern Studies create graduation portfolios.

In addition, The Office of Assessment for Trinity College asks each department to create an assessment portfolio to track student learning. Individual courses in disciplines such as Sociology, Spanish and Global Health are asking students to create portfolios for their courses.

Learning Innovation launched a new Duke Portfolios website at portfolio.duke.edu featuring information on PebblePad’s various uses, how-to videos and example portfolios for inspiration.

 

In the 2017-2018 academic year, portfolio.duke.edu had 3,510 sessions and 5,865 pageviews. Website users clicked through to log into PebblePad 1,525 times.