Professor Pavelock transformed how students document their experiences—from paper to digital portfolios. Students now leave with impressive dynamic resumes.
Higher Education
Professor Dwayne Pavelock’s 14-week field experience course prepares student teachers for their careers in the classroom after graduation. Traditionally, the students would document their semester’s work in notebooks, but Pavelock saw the constraints of the paper submissions.
With the goal of students leaving his class with a dynamic, easily shareable resume, Pavelock selected bulb Digital Portfolios as the platform for his class to capture their work. With time, it not only lifted the constraints of the paper submissions, but it also streamlined the feedback loop and gave students the space to take ownership of their work.
Before implementing digital portfolios, students would submit their notebooks to Pavelock. He would write his feedback directly in the notebook and send it back to the student. The student would then incorporate his edits, reprint the paper, and resubmit their work. Digital portfolios have streamlined this process. Using bulb’s inline commenting feature, Pavelock provides real time feedback directly to the students. Students can quickly and easily make edits to their work, using any device.
"The digital platform is easily changeable in the quest for excellence. Once the portfolio is submitted, and following my assessment, students can correct and improve it without making additional copies."
Everything the students learn and create during their 14-week experiences are documented in their digital portfolios. Students are encouraged to organize and store lesson plans, to create pages outlining semester or annual teaching plans, to write explanations of their educational philosophies and pedagogical approaches, and to keep track of classroom management plans within bulb.
bulb integrates with over 1900 apps, making it easy for the student teachers to embed videos of them leading instruction, audio of them working one-on-one with a student, and pictures of student work. It gives Pavelock a clear understanding of how students are doing in the field. With the student teachers adding new artifacts each week, Professor Pavelock and the students create a collection of evidence; documenting growth, capturing reflections, and noting best practices.
“bulb allows them to curate teaching artifacts they can use during their career, while constantly adding new items.” —Professor Pavelock
An additional benefit of using bulb is its ability to go beyond a traditional resume, helping to differentiate these students in their careers. While still required to include their resume within their portfolio, students can additionally add supporting videos, images, self reflections and other items to create a dynamic resume. Their digital portfolios show their experiences. Multimedia embeds give administrators the ability to see the student teachers in action.
“The bulb platform enables them to showcase their skill set and abilities in a more professional format that further prepares them for using such a tool once they become a teacher.” —Professor Pavelock
The previous process of documenting learning within a notebook made students’ sharing options extremely limited. With the new process, student teachers can share their dynamic portfolio with the click of a button. Using bulb’s publishing settings they can easily share their work with Professor Pavelock, publicly, or create private links to send to future employers.
"An administrator can see an individual's teaching style and ability through video and have a better idea of the person they are hiring. School officials also recognize the candidate's ability to use digital portfolios in the classroom to enhance student learning."
For Pavelock and his student teachers, the digital portfolio proved to be more than a replacement for the notebooks. It’s an improved way to show competency, assess performence, and conduct classroom work. An additional benefit, his students have the advantage when sharing their resumes with administrators during the hiring process.
Watch a recorded class session where Pavelock explains to his students how to use bulb to capture their field experiences.
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