Shared spaces and 'secret gardens': The troublesome journey from undergraduate students to undergraduate scholars via PebblePad

This chapter illustrates a curricular intervention carried out at Coventry University (UK) with undergraduate students reading English. It explores how the students maximised their use of the tools available within the ePortfolio software PebblePad. It discusses how the software tools were used to enhance and personalise the students' learning experience and engage in the discourse of 'becoming researchers' in the second year module Dissertation Methods and Approaches. It proposes that the use of some ePortfolio tools helped many students to become critical and to actively engage in their ontological journey of transition to becoming independent thinkers. However it also reports that some problematic issues surfaced following the implementation of the curricular action: some students find active learning and active engagement in the scholarship of research 'troublesome'. Finally this chapter gives consideration to how to integrate the lessons learned from this experience into the curriculum for the next cohort of students.