FMS TEL

Supporting Placements

The Placements system has a focus on supporting assessment, reflection, and three-way communication and file-sharing during placements (students, external supervisors & NU tutors/staff). For 2023/4, the system was extended to support evidencing of individual competencies/outcomes, with a student dashboard and ability for ad-hoc assessors to provide assessment without the need to log-in.

Background

The Placements system was developed by FMS TEL as a sub-system of NU Reflect. It has been used by PGCE Programmes (ECLS) since 2017/18. The system absorbed established practice from the PGCE programmes, but was designed to be configurable for potential use by other programmes. It has been available to all programmes at the University from September 2019. It has been used by DClinPsy and other programmes.

Governance of NU Reflect (including Placements) is via a management team (academic lead, LTDS lead & FMS TEL lead), which reports to Digital Education Sub-Committee (DESC). A ‘baseline’ for the Placements system was developed following a period of consultation in 2022/23:

Baseline requirement	Description	Purpose
Custom forms	Manage/create custom forms for a placement scheme	The ability to develop context specific bespoke forms for student completion in line with programme requirements, supporting a range of functions e.g., assessment, reflection, placement evaluation etc.
Rubric-based assessment	Including scheme-specific skills/competencies and level identifiers	The ability to assess student work against skills/competencies in line with programme context
Three-way file sharing	Between student, external supervisor & University tutor	The ability to share forms with relevant users to support scheme requirements
Competency sign-off	Sign-off of skills/competencies/ outcomes, including by external supervisors.	To support sign-off by external supervisors and other third parties.
Reporting	Data feeds or data download	Required for reporting to funding/regulatory bodies.
Admin access	Tools to monitor placement cohort/assign to placement, location & supervisor etc. Set automated deadlines relative to placement dates.	Scheme specific control to amend information as/when required, delegated to school/programme teams.

Baseline requirements and features of the Placement system

PGCE students spend the bulk of their time on placements in schools around the region, with school-based supervisors who support and assess the students. A rubric-based assessment tool was developed and configured so that these supervisors can assess progress and provide feedback against national Teaching Standards (see Screenshot). They click on the desired Level Descriptors and can also add qualitative feedback.

Rubric-based Assessment in the Placements System

Additional forms (e.g. weekly progress) were set up; these were designed to be customisable as there were different requirements for Primary and Secondary PGCE programmes. A key design feature was to reduce the burden on admin teams, in particular by automating deadlines – in particular, forms are configurable with deadlines set relative to placement start and end dates, and set to who will complete these (supervisor, student, University tutor etc).

Students are automatically imported into the system, based on their programme or module registrations with the University. Programme administrators manage external accounts for placement supervisors, who do not have University logins.

Initially rubrics and forms were set-up by the development team; however, over time, the team in ECLS generally self-manage their use of the system in creating new forms and making old forms inactive. Form and rubrics data can be exported for reporting purposes and University tutors can view supervisors marks for the main Teaching Standards collated across the students (2 or 3) placements, before entering a final overall assessment. When there have been major changes to the professional frameworks, support was needed from the development team.

The DClinPsy programme (Psychology), where students spend the bulk of their time on placements, followed a similar model to the above PGCE programmes.

Developments for 2023/4

Pharmacy began using the Placements system in 2023/4. Requirements were significantly different to those of existing programmes using the system. These required extending the software, which was resourced by FMS. In particular, the focus is on evidencing individual competencies (rather than all competencies being assessed in the same rubric). Also, rather than a set-supervisor competing forms, there was a requirement for sign-off of competencies by ad-hoc supervisors, without the need to log-in. Established practice in MBBS was applied, with students entering the assessor’s Email address, which generates an Email with a secure link to the required assessment form. A ‘dashboard’ was developed for students and their tutors to see evidence by competency by year of the programme.

Student dashboard showing evidence by competency

The assessment tools and processes are indented to closely match those which students’ will need to use after graduating and using professional vocational ePortfolio. The new features of the software were designed to be configurable, to support the competency/skills frameworks of other programmes.

Further work will be undertaken, including developing a process for students to select a sub-set of items from their portfolio for each competency, for their end-point assessment.

OpenAI: Free Resources

The following list of free resources has been compiled by OpenAI and offers free training courses, lesson plans and student resources that can be shared with learners.

Online training and guidance on the use of AI in education

Wharton Interactive’s Faculty Director Ethan Mollick and Director of Pedagogy Lilach Mollick offer a free five-part online course for educators on how the latest large language models, including ChatGPT, can be used to enhance teaching and learning.
aiEDU hosts free webinars on the use of AI in education. Educators can sign up here for their upcoming webinars in the fall.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) offers a 15-hour, instructor-led online course to train educators on how to help their students learn about AI and a guide for school leaders that provides practical tips on how to promote the responsible and ethical use of AI in schools.
Microsoft offers a free online course for educators on how they can use AI to improve learning outcomes, reduce educator workload, and increase learner engagement.
Code.org, ETS, ISTE and Khan Academy offer a free online learning series for educators interested in learning about AI and how it can be leveraged to improve student outcomes.

Lesson plans and learning activities about AI

aiEDU provides a wide variety of free lesson plans and learning activities that any teacher, regardless of their level of AI expertise, can use to spark their students’ curiosity and engage them in lively discussions about AI capabilities, challenges and ethics.
MIT’s Day of AI offers free curriculum and activities that teachers can use to introduce K-12 students to AI and how it shapes their lives.
Stanford Graduate School of Education, Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Institute for Human-Centered AI offers CRAFT, a free online collection of research-based AI literacy resources developed with high school teachers that they can use to help students explore, question, and critique AI.

Education products built on top of OpenAI’s models

We’re also excited by the early promise of AI powered education tools that our partners are building on our platform. Here are just a few illustrative examples.

Khan Academy, a nonprofit that offers online lessons to students of all ages, uses GPT-4 to power Khanmigo, a tool that functions as both a virtual tutor for students and a classroom assistant for teachers.
Canva, an online design platform, uses OpenAI’s large language models to power Magic Write. It offers Magic Write for free to educators, who use the tool to create presentations, classroom activities and lesson plans.
Duolingo, a language online learning company, uses GPT-4 to power Roleplay, an AI conversation partner that practices real world conversation skills with learners, and Explain My Answer, which learners can use to gather deeper understanding on their mistakes.
edX, a global online learning platform, uses GPT4 and GPT3.5 to support digital tools that deliver real-time academic support and course discovery assistance to online learners.

Source: Are there any resources for educators to learn more about AI? | OpenAI Help Center

Copilot Notebook

Notebook is a new feature in the Web version of Microsoft Copilot, which Newcastle University staff and students currently have licenced access to via https://copilot.microsoft.com (make sure you sign in using your University credentials – you may also need to use “Switch to a work or school account” in the profile menu).

The first thing to notice about Copilot Notebook is it’s extended character limit of up to 18,000 characters, which is much more than the standard Copilot chat, which has a character limit of 4,000. This is particularly useful when you need assistance with longer content, such as essays, papers, or articles that require proofreading or summarising.

The true power of Notebook lies in It’s facility for prompt iteration. In many A.I. Chat tools, tweaking a prompt usually generates brand-new results, often losing the context of the previous answer. However, in Notebook, your previous prompt remains intact after initial answers are generated. This means you can more easily tweak the original prompt and iteratively refine it, to optimise the answers that the A.I. generates.

Of course the disclaimer “Copilot uses AI. Check for mistakes” remains true of generative AI services in general. A.I. can generate many accurate answers, but occasionally have “A.I. Hallucination”, where convincing answers may include false or misleading information, presented as fact. Nevertheless, the time-saving benefits are potentially significant.

Using A.I. effectively involves you developing the skills and experience to write more precise prompts and to take the time to read results and quality assure them. The layout of the Web version of Copilot Notebook, with prompt on the left and results on the right (see screenshot), complement the development of these skills.

The current licence held by Newcastle University doesn’t include Copilot integration with your documents, Outlook Emails, Calendars etc. So don’t expect great results for questions which are University, Faculty or School specific (integrating contextualised University and Faculty-specific information is something we are exploring in our ERDP A.I. Chatbot project). However, Copilot Notebook can be very useful for generating general subject related answers, or refining your specific content.

In summary, Copilot Notebook gives you a new interface to refine your prompts to get more precise results. The more generous character limit is helpful, for example when drafting plans, generating ideas, or organising information.

FMS TEL web services downtime 8-12am Tuesday 2nd April

We want to inform you about essential maintenance scheduled for the morning of Tuesday, 2nd April, starting at about 8am.

During this period, all FMS TEL web services will be unavailable, and you may experience some performance issues for a short while afterward.

These are some of the main services that will be affected:

FMS TEL Sign in portal
NU Reflect, PGR CoP
MLE, Evaluation, Feedback
Identity, Dental Evaluation
FMS Projects, Personal Tutoring
Placements, Workshop Booking
Grad School SAS
WRS
Role Play North

This maintenance is crucial for ensuring the reliability and efficiency of our systems, allowing us to continue providing you with the best possible service. While we understand that interruptions can be inconvenient, please rest assured that we will strive to minimize any disruption and complete the maintenance as swiftly as possible.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding and patience during this time.

Thank you for your cooperation.

FMS TEL Development Team

FMS Education Research

Are you interested in an area of research but perhaps struggling to find the time to develop your idea? Did you know that we have a Faculty research group where you can join like-minded colleagues with similar research interests?

Four research sub-categories have been set up:

Digital – this includes digital capabilities, use of software, use of AI within a teaching setting
Fit for Future – this includes skills development, professionalism, employability, transitions
Teaching and Learning – this includes assessment and feedback, evaluation of teaching methods, innovative teaching methods
Widening Participation – this includes inclusivity, accessibility to teaching and opportunities, student experience

If you have an idea that you would like to share or you want to work with others in any of the aforementioned categories, please get in touch via our Teams channel: FMS Education Research Theme | General | Microsoft Teams. Alternatively, you can email Bryan Burford, Iain Keenan or Vanessa Armstrong.

What’s New in Microsoft Teams?

By now you will likely be using the ‘new’ Microsoft Teams. At first glance you might only spot a few superficial differences compared to ‘classic’ Teams, which most of the Faculty and the wider University adopted en-mass during the Pandemic. However, the desktop application has been completely rebuilt and does offer some significant enhancements. Microsoft will be beginning a phased retirement of Classic Teams from 31st March 2024, so it’s a good time to take a look at the new features.

Why the changes?
• To improve efficiency. The New Teams is claimed to be 2x faster and uses 50% less memory used, saving battery power and with faster start up.
• To simplify and streamline. The new Teams offers a toned-down appearance and other subtle changes make it look more like a native Windows 11 app (though there still remain differences in Web, PC Desktop, Mac, PWA and mobile versions of Teams).
• To be AI ready – Teams will be supporting proprietary AI features from other Microsoft Apps (many of these are behind paywalls, so not available for everyone, if your organisation hasn’t paid extra for the licence).

Teams and Chat
Teams, Chat and Activity, remain the familiar main “apps” in Microsoft Teams in addition to video calls/meetings. Up to now, finding stuff on Teams has been challenging, but the new version has search within Teams Channels and within Chats.

One useful change in Teams (but sadly not Chat) is that new posts automatically open in the rich format editor – meaning less embarrassing part messages sent, when you accidentally hit return! There is also the option to change the order for viewing posts in a channel – newest at the top or newest at the bottom.

Switching between a “Post” or “Announcement” is a little easier in the new Teams. Announcements have a coloured header and headline. After you start a post, there is a small button to change the post type. Including an image in the announcement heading is currently broken, and in future this might be AI generated.

Forwarding messages in Chat is also easier (right click on the message and use Forward from the … options). In the desktop version you can now “Pop out” a chat into a new Window. Also, you can now delete a chat (as well as Hide) but this deletes it for you only (not others in the chat) and you may need to delete files in the message separately.

If you are the owner of a team, there is a new option to Archive the team. At that point members can still view, but can’t start new chats/reply etc., but you can still add/remove members. You can also unarchive if needed.

Three Dot-tastic! …
The horizontal three dots (…) are used even more extensively in the new Teams, signifying a “more options” menu. In some views there are up to 6 of the three dots in different places around the screen! Not a major issue, but a bit of a nightmare if you are writing instructions, or if you are offering Help Desk advice; “just click on the three dots…” Oh, and sometimes it’s referred to as the “meatballs menu”.

Other Changes
Settings have all been moved into one place (via the top right …menu), which simplifies things. The Presence (status) has been made more reliable, but you may still appear “Away” whist busy working in other applications. You can also now set your status (Available, Do Not Disturb etc) for a specific duration. Work location (Office or Remote) can be set for the current day.

Some of the “Apps” within Teams have changed. “Files” is now “One Drive”. “Tasks” is currently “Tasks by Planner and To Do”. Calendar has a new agenda view. There are some new apps too – you can add People, Meet and Co-Pilot (if paid for by your organisation) via the three dot menu in the left-hand App pane. Calendar, Meet and People have a lot of overlap with other Microsoft products but may be worth a look, depending on your preferences. “People” gives you a place to manage NU and external contacts in one place. It was automatically populated for me with contacts from over 20 years from Outlook, but many had long since left the University. You can categorise contacts, but the big limitation is that you can’t share contacts with your team (presumably Microsoft don’t want you to miss out on the opportunity of paying for an expensive CRM solution!). “Meet” is intended to let you see all your meetings in one place. You can add new people and have a pre-meet chat. AI is used to identify if you are working on a doc with people involved in the meeting. There are also recordings of meeting calls (if available). There are a growing number of third party apps that you can add – Microsoft appear to be encouraging an ecosystem similar to Android and Apple’s App Stores, around Teams. Presumably they are accelerating this strategy as competition to develop marketplaces for new AI apps intensifies.

Add Apps

Some people may belong to multiple organisations and have different accounts on Teams (we have “Tenancy” on NU Sharepoint; some within FMS also have accounts with NHS organisations, research councils, or other partners). The new Teams makes it easier to switch and notifications and activity is easier to see in other Tenancies, without switching accounts. But don’t switch tenancy mid call, or you risk being kicked off your call!

Be Aware!
• Teams has been rebuilt from the ground up – so there are some initial bugs. For example, spell checking is intermittently broken; currently US English only (at 1st March 2024)
• Some people at NU are reporting fewer notifications than expected; some may have been lost on migration from Classic teams – so it is worth reviewing your notification settings for each Team you are in.
• Updates to Teams are happening frequently – so update to the latest version regularly (at least ensure automatic updates are enabled). Since writing this article, in the space of a week, “CoPilot” had disappeared as a distinct native app in Teams, but there are several CoPilot-based specialist apps and more third party apps are appearing.

Acknowledgements and Further Information
This article draws on a Webinar by Jo Robinson-Lamb & Lucy Bolt from the NUIT Digital Adoption Team and information about changes to Teams on the Microsoft Website. Opinions given here are entirely personal to the author.

Revolutionising Learning: AI and Group Work Unveil a New Approach to Reading Activities

Navigating through the extensive volume of reading material in certain modules can be a daunting task for students, often leaving them overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of information. Recognising this challenge, the module leaders of ONC8017 took a pioneering approach to ease the burden on students. In a bold move towards innovation, they harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and embraced the collaborative spirit of group work to revolutionise the learning experience.

tablet showing research paper and a robot saying i can help with that — Image used in Discussion Board task

The Task

Article Allocation:

The first step involved compiling a comprehensive list of articles relevant to the module’s curriculum. Each article was carefully selected to contribute significantly to the students’ understanding of the subject matter. Subsequently, the articles were allocated to individual students, ensuring that each student had a unique piece of content to delve into. Students were asked to read and summarise their assigned article.

Student Autonomy:

To cater to diverse learning preferences, students were given the autonomy to choose their preferred approach in engaging with the assigned article. They could opt to read and summarise the content independently, a traditional method fostering individual comprehension and analysis. Alternatively, students had the option to choose an AI tool for summarisation, exploring the cutting-edge capabilities of technology to streamline the information extraction process.

Students who opted to use an AI tool were tasked with critiquing the summaries generated. This not only encouraged a deeper engagement with the material but also honed their analytical skills as they assessed the accuracy, coherence, and relevance of the AI-generated summaries.

Following consultations with the Newcastle University Library, we recommended the AI tools Scholarcy and TLDR This. However, students were able to choose any tool that best suited their preferences. The library, also provided valuable insights, including a copyright statement and links to AI Guidance, as well as the Uses and Limitations of AI.

If your allocated article is behind a sign in wall we kindly request that you do not upload or share this licensed material with third party AI tools
Copyright statement

Group Collaboration:

The students were asked to share their summaries to a discussion board and to look through the summaries posted by others. They could then identify which literature was most relevant to them and read the articles in depth themselves.

Recognising the significance of collaborative learning, the module leaders fostered a sense of community among students. Group discussions and collaborative sessions were encouraged, providing a platform for students to share insights, discuss varying perspectives, and collectively enhance their understanding of the subject matter. This collaborative element not only enriched the learning experience but also mirrored the collaborative environments students are likely to encounter in their future careers.

The Student Experience

40% used, 47% didnt use, 13% unable to use AI

53% of students opted for AI-assisted summarisation, showcasing a keen interest in exploring the capabilities of technology for academic purposes. This choice not only demonstrated a desire for efficiency but also provided students with valuable hands-on experience in harnessing AI tools for practical applications.

However, the practical application of AI tools had its challenges. 25% of students who chose AI encountered difficulties, with the tools unable to produce a summary at all.

tldr this 4 scholarcy 3 chat gpt 4 unknown 1

In their candid feedback, students highlighted both positive and negative aspects of their experiences. While some were impressed by the efficiency of AI tools, all students expressed concerns about gaps and missing details in the generated summaries. Specific instances of errors, omissions, and disjointed reading experiences were noted, revealing the practical limitations of relying solely on AI for complex tasks. The majority of students who opted for AI, eventually opted to manually summarise the articles anyway, indicating a less-than-ideal outcome from the AI tools.

The AI tool also provided a second longer summary. This summarised most sections of the paper individually, which was presented like a smaller version of the paper. There was still important information missing, which was clear from the disjointed reading experience. Even so, I was still quite impressed with how well the AI tool had summarised the vast amount of information in the original paper into something relatively usable.
Student experience of Scolarcy

No inaccuracies were noted. Good summary of the epidemiology, although it seems that the AI summary has basically just been derived from the abstract of the article. A number of gaps were identified.
Student experience of TLDR This

The article has been summarised into ten key points, but these are not detailed. For example. only one of the statistics provided in the article have been included in the AI summary.
Student experience of Chat GPT

Final Thoughts

These nuanced results underscore the importance of balancing technological innovation with practical considerations. While the incorporation of AI offered students valuable exposure to emerging technologies, the ultimate outcome indicated that, as of now, AI tools might not be the ultimate solution we were hoping for.

Despite the unexpected challenges encountered in the use of AI, this experiment has provided invaluable insights. Recognising the evolving nature of technology, we remain committed to maintaining the task, observing how AI technology progresses year after year and see if, as the technology advances, the dialogue from students changes.

This post was written with the assistance of AI tool, Chat GPT.

2023 Roundup

We hope you have enjoyed learning more about the work we do in FMS TEL, below are a few areas we covered and successes we had in 2023. If you have any suggestions for content for 2024 we would love to hear from you.

FMS TEL Successes

FMS TEL’s Ashley Reynolds was involved in a piece of work, entitled ‘Evaluation of the Training in Early Detection for Early Intervention (TEDEI) e-learning course using Kirkpatrick’s method‘, in collaboration with Dr Anna Basu and Janice Pearse, which was published in the BMC Medical Education online journal. Read our blog piece from March 2023.

Simon Cotterill, Gemma Mitchelson and Michael Hughes succeeded in securing funding from the Educational Research Development and Practice fund to explore use of A.I. with contextualised and personalised data.

Conference

FMS TEL attended Newcastle University Learning and Teaching Conference 2023 with a stand, where we answered questions about what we do and how to contact us, and handed out a booklet detailing some case studies of our work.

We also displayed a poster by Dr Michelle Miller and presented a video from Eleanor Gordon and Gemma Mitchelson.

Dr Iain Keenan presented MOOC Adventures: From Conception to Reality at the Newcastle University Learning and Teaching Conference 2023. FMS TEL worked with Iain on this course and he highlighted how helpful it has been to work alongside FMS TEL to bring the course to life.

Software and Systems

We explained how you can create your own WordPress blog, and presented our experience of running this blog to the Directors of Education Forum.

With all the discussion of AI and ChatGPT, we blogged about ChatGPT, what it is and how it works. We reviewed AI Gamma.app, which is a tool for generating presentations, documents or web pages.

We were invited to review Audience Interaction System, and we profiled the FMS Feedback System, produced by our development team in FMS TEL.

We attended a great presentation on GigXR, which is a clinical simulation platform. It is an immersive technology which projects 3D holographic objects, which you can interact with when wearing a headset. We also introduced a new tool for PowerPoint which allows you to put a live video feed into PowerPoint: Cameo for PowerPoint.

Tips and Guides

We published a series called Taking Ctrl, which details keyboard shortcuts you can use to perform some actions. Here is an example: Taking Ctrl: Paste text without Formatting

We posted some advice on Spring cleaning your digital clutter, such as tidying up teams and One Drive, and we provided tips on displaying meetings in your Outlook Calendars

We had a special guest post by Module Leader David Thewlis discussing Overlays in videos using OpenShot Video Editor. We also featured work with Associate Lecturer Ann Johnson on developing Online Asynchronous Materials and looking at Unconscious Bias in Healthcare.

Prompted by an enquiry from Michelle’s poster presentation we detailed how to add audio to pdf documents.

We presented a case study on Giving life to old presentations, showcased a Branching Activity, bringing an exercise to life with videos in H5P and Canvas, and showcased some of our other favourite creations in H5P, such as interactive videos and 360 tours.

Michelle Miller Tributes

We’d like to take this opportunity to also pay tribute to our colleague Dr Michelle Miller, who sadly passed away in June of this year. Michelle was our Student Digital Skills Officer, training FMS students in writing long documents, using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and much more.

Below are comments from some members of our team.

It was an absolute pleasure to work with Michelle. She was a ray of light who lit up the whole room. I loved her positive outlook on life (no matter what she was going through), and her passion for cats.
Tracy Connell

Such a truly lovely lady, and a big miss from the team.
Will raise a Guinness to her soon.
Ash Reynolds

Her empty desk is a cheerful nod to the vibrant presence she brought to our office. Always ready to help, she played a key role in my growth, both professionally and personally. I am very grateful for the impact she had on me.
Emily Smith

Michelle was an esteemed colleague who is a huge miss both in our TEL team, and across many of the schools that she supported. She was selfless and always willing to help. I feel honoured to have worked with such a wonderful colleague.
Gemma Mitchelson

Thank You!

The blog is edited by a different FMS TEL team member every month, and many team members have taken on this task, as well as contributing posts to the blog – thank you to all of you! Our thanks also go to those colleagues who have offered their examples of practice for us to showcase here. We look forward to working with many more of you in 2024.

ERDP Project: Exploring AI

As we develop our understanding of AI and its capabilities, we are looking at how advancing technologies such as ChatGPT might assist colleagues and students with day to day tasks. FMS TEL team members Simon Cotterill, Gemma Mitchelson and Michael Hughes succeeded in securing ERDP funding to explore such possibilities.

Project aims:

To enable staff and students to access contextualised and personal data via AI machine learning software
To investigate a process for generating AI responses in a more ethical way
To improve the University’s understanding of AI machine learning in an HE context.

We are investigating use of contextualised data, formatted with natural language, optimized for A.I. For example, using a student’s programme and module information, their timetable data, and MOF information to assist the student in accessing key information more easily. Later this could be enhanced with richer information, such as programme/module study guides, VLE course information and other sources. via APIs. Likewise, a chatbot for staff could draw together University, Faculty and School-specific information.

An exciting new feature to be explored is that of agents (aka ‘Assistants’) and their ability to take on different functions and different personas; effectively acting as a small workforce to support, user needs. Up to now, most of us are familiar with having a conversation with a single agent, yet there is growing scope for multi-agent use. In the visual below you can see an Ai Agents overview from Chat Dev. By setting instructions and ’embedding’ information into the system users can encourage each agent to behave differently. For example, “You are a member of the Design team who will come up with simple ways to achieve a set goal”, “You are a CEO who will talk to the CTO on what steps should be taken to achieve X,Y and Z.”…

A picture showing agents positioned in various roles, lead by a virtual CEO.

image source: https://github.com/OpenBMB/ChatDev

The technologies are evolving very rapidly. At an “AI Sprint” in late November, the FMS TEL team were able to work with newly released features from OpenAI; these make the embedding of customised information and personalising Assistants (agents) much more accessible. These and other new features support the integration of AI features within other systems. As such, there is likely to be a proliferation of new AI products and plugins based on these features – and hopefully eventually within the systems supported by FMS TEL. All work in our project will be cross-referenced to our university principles on AI which can be accessed here: Artificial Intelligence (AI) | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)

There are challenges to consider; in particular those related to Data Protection, which we continue to review. There are also financial considerations when using external AI services like OpenAI or via Azure API, which are metered (pay according to use), rather than fixed price plans, which need investigating as part of our intended trial/pilot.

We are in the early stages of fact-finding but will be reaching out to FMS schools in the new year with an invite to workshops to share our proof of concept.

Taking Ctrl: Ctrl Taken

control taken, wrapping up the taking control series

Thanks to everyone who submitted their favourite keyboard shortcuts. Here is a round up of all the shortcuts mentioned:

Shortcut	Function
Windows key +E	Open File Explorer
Windows: Ctrl + Shift + V Mac: Option + Shift + Cmd + V	Paste text without Formatting
Windows: Ctrl + Z Mac: Cmd + Z	Undo
Windows: Ctrl + Shift + Z or Ctrl + Y Mac: Cmd + Shift + Z	Redo
Windows: Windows key + L Mac: Control + Cmd + Q	Lock your Computer
Windows: Ctrl + Shift + T Mac: Cmd + Shift + T	Reopen Closed Tabs Reopen a tab in Chrome
Chrome: Ctrl/ Cmd + Shift + N Firefox: Ctrl/ Cmd + Shift + P Safari: Cmd + Shift + N	Incognito Mode
Windows: Windows + Shift + S Mac: Shift + Cmd + 4	Snipping Tool
Windows: Ctrl + K Mac: Cmd + K	Insert a Link
Windows key + left/right/up/down	Arrange Windows
Windows: F12 Mac: Cmd + Opt + I	Developer Tools Device Mode
Windows: Window + A > Focus Assist Mac: Option + click Notification Center icon	Focus Assist/Do not disturb

Summary Table

We will be starting a new and exciting series in 2024!