Academic staff are expected to guide students in using PebblePad effectively. To do this confidently, staff should be fully familiar with their workbooks and understand how these link to the PebblePad assignments they have created for their modules. This means exploring them from a student’s perspective, identifying any potential points of confusion, and understanding exactly how students will interact with the content. By doing so, tutors can anticipate common questions, explain workflows clearly, and offer practical solutions during class or placement preparation sessions.
You can request training at any time from your Learning Technologist who will be very happy to help you.
The most effective way to support your students is for staff to understand how PebblePad and student workbooks work from a student perspective. For this purpose, staff will have access to to dummy student accounts on every workspace, enabling them to log in and test workbooks as a learner would. By running through their own content in a simulated student environment, tutors can check that sharing permissions, submission settings, and feedback tools work as intended and also gain a better understanding how students interact with their workbooks and with the PebblePad dashboard.
For further information on how to access the dummy student accounts for a workspace, please contact your Learning Technologist.
Having an introductory PebblePad session is an effective way of initially supporting students. Ideally, this should coincide with student accounts being created so that students log in for the first time within the introductory session. We recommend the following timeframe.
1. Staff decide on a date for their PebblePad introduction session and let their Learning Technologist know.
2. Student account information is collected from SITS by staff and sent to their Learning Technologist 2 weeks before the introduction session.
3. Learn Tech will create the requested accounts and release these just before the PebblePad introduction session.
4. During the PebblePad introduction session, staff will support students to login to PebblePad and carry out an orientation of how PebblePad works and outline some of the key processes and features. Please see the links below to support you with this session.
Tutors are the first line of support for students in the use of PebblePad; please use the information below to help support students with common issues.
Students are unable to login or students did not receive their welcome email from PebblePad.
Student's account is marked as dormant
Students receive an 'external account not found' message when trying to share - This means that their assessor does not have an account or they have inputted the email address incorrectly.
A student doesn't see the option 'share with an external' when opening their sharing options - This will be because they haven't yet shared with workbook for assessment.
A student is unable to complete the steps for 'sharing with an external assessor' - It is likely that the student is not following the instructions carefully enough.
A student has completed work in their workbook, but this work is not visible to their academic assessors - It is likely that the student is working on a workbook that has not been submitted. The student will need to locate the submitted workbook and transfer content to there.
The deadline may have passed, in which case to view the student's work they will need an extension to their assignment.
The student is unable to see assessor feedback - This will be due to the feedback has not yet been released to the student.
The student has completed templates (such as worked hours) and they can see the completed documents in their asset store, but they are not visible within their workbook to assessors - the student has not made the completed templates visible by turning on the search results.
The student has opened their workbook, but they are unable to write in any of the text boxes - the student will have opened their workbook from with ATLAS rather than their asset store.
For technical issues or issues that staff are unable to support students with, please use the PebblePad contact form found in the links below.
Staff can also direct students to book time with the Digital Skills Ambassador. Please see the link below.
If you require assistance with NILE, please contact LearnTech Support using the NILE Enquiry Form
If you require assistance with PebblePad, please contact PebblePad Support using the PebblePad Contact Form