Padlet at Staffordshire University

All Staffordshire University staff can take advantage of our institutional access to Padlet – an interactive online notice board. It’s a simple and intuitive tool that allows staff and students to share ideas and comments, give and respond to discussion prompts, or even contribute to maps, flowcharts and timelines.

With just a few tweaks in the settings you can choose the perfect colour scheme, design and layout for your Padlet board, and control how participants interact with it. Depending on the context, you can allow people to rate, “upvote” or “like” each others’ posts, post anonymously, or add comments to posts to form discussion threads. Padlet allows multimedia posts to allow people express themselves in different ways – by attaching files, photos, videos, audio, polls, GIFs and more.

Padlets can be shared publicly or just within Staffordshire University. Public Padlets can be protected with a password, or set to read-only if necessary.

All this makes Padlet a really useful and versatile bit of tech to incorporate in your teaching. The TILE Hub team are really pleased to see it being used more widely across the University too – and want to share this excellent example made in collaboration between the Student Wellbeing and Marketing & Communications teams.    

The “Wobble Wall” Padlet

World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is held on 10^th October each year to raise awareness and get people talking about mental health. The Student Wellbeing team at Staffs are running a number of in-person events on WMHD 2023 across the Stoke, Stafford and London sites. Students at each campus will be able to visit wellbeing stalls and stands to pick up information about the various support services the Student Wellbeing team provides (along with a few freebies too).

To compliment these physical events, Student Wellbeing’s Lisa Benson and Communications Office Claire Frays have created an online space for students to connect with each other and share how they are feeling (their “wobbles”). This “Virtual Wobble Wall” was created using Padlet, and is designed like a physical brick wall where students can add any number of anonymous posts to share with others. You can have a look at it for yourself using the link below:

https://staffs.padlet.org/comms61/world-mental-health-day-virtual-wobble-wall-2erv0tfn4nmz5fhx

The idea behind creating a space to express feelings on the Wobble Wall is to normalise these wobbles and help students feel that they are not alone. It’s also a space to share positive and inspirational posts too, that might make someone smile when they’re feeling low. The Padlet description encourages students to “take a break and find a moment of calm away from the hustle and bustle of University life, relax and reflect on what you’re going through”.

The Student Wellbeing team will also be creating a physical version of the Wobble Wall on Tuesday 10^th October, 12-2pm in the Science Centre on the Stoke Leek Road campus. Students can leave wobbles or positive messages on the wall, and talk to wellbeing staff if they need to.

Want to try Padlet for yourself?

If you’re feeling inspired to set up a Padlet, here’s what you need to do…

If you haven’t already, sign up for a Staffordshire University Padlet account by filling in this form: Padlet/Thinglink Registration of Interest Form

When you get an account, you can then sign in through the Staffs Padlet link using your single sign-on university email address (username@staff.staffs) and password. Click on “Make a Padlet” and explore all the different options.

If you feel like you need a bit more guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out to your TILE Hub contact, or drop us an email at TILEHub@staffs.ac.uk. You can also ask the whole TILE Hub community via the “Interactive Technologies” channel on the TILE Hub Teams site.

We also have some upcoming Padlet training through MS Teams – use the links below to book your place:
11^th October at 11am
17^th October at 4.30pm (Padlet/Thinglink/Sharepoint drop-in)
26^th October at 3pm