The Practice Manual: a platform for students to showcase skills development and learning

University College (UC) associate degree students are required to maintain a ‘Practice Manual’ which is an online portfolio. Portfolios have been used in education for years to evidence learning and development, showcase achievement, enable flexibility and creativity, and encourage reflective practice (Stefani, Mason, & Pegler, 2007). However, what is unique and innovative about the ‘Practice Manual’ is that it has been constructed in PebblePad, in a very different way, and in a way that we were originally advised could not be done. This presentation showcases how the Experiential Education Team constructed this tool, and how it is meaningfully connected to our practice-based curriculum and transferable skills and professional attributes (TSPAs) framework; tailored to each course to ensure purposeful collection of evidence against technical skills; and, most importantly, these online repositories can be individually distributed to students, saved by students and adapted by students. This ensures that students start their study journey with UC with a ready-made, tailored, and adaptable tool that requires no initial ‘set up time’ for them. They can then leave with evidence of their acquired knowledge (their academic record and testamur), and also the Practice Manual that captures industry-specific skills, and employability skills (transferable across contexts), and that contains material they can refer back to and add to over time, making it a future-relevant tool for lifelong learning. The presentation showcases the development of an interactive, adaptable, ‘student friendly’ online portfolio tool that has the potential to benefit cohorts outside of the University College alone.