As part of the Education for Life Strategy, Student Launchpad sets out an ambitious vision to enhance how students are supported throughout their academic journey. A key part of this work is the development of a new digital system designed to transform academic advising.
This project focuses on creating a single, consistent, and accessible advising record for every student. By bringing together interactions, goals, and referrals in one place, the system aims to support more connected, transparent, and equitable advising experiences across the student lifecycle. The system is being developed and delivered by the FMS Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team, in close collaboration with academic and professional services colleagues.
Moving beyond fragmented systems
In many institutions, advising information is spread across multiple platforms, making it difficult to build a complete picture of a student’s experience. This project addresses that challenge by providing a structured space where advising interactions can be recorded and shared appropriately.
The result is a more holistic view of each student’s progress, enabling better conversations, more informed support, and improved continuity over time.
What we’re delivering first
The initial release, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) launching in September 2026, focuses on the core foundations needed to support effective advising:
A persistent advising record across academic years
Role-based access for staff and students
Simple logging of advising interactions and actions
Referral workflows to specialist services with status tracking
A student-facing view to support reflection and engagement
This approach prioritises usability and consistency, ensuring the system is easy to adopt while delivering immediate value.
Designing for real use
A central principle of the project is simplicity. Interfaces are being designed to reduce administrative burden and support intuitive use, while still maintaining robust permissions, audit trails, and data security.
Early design work is exploring how students and advisers can clearly visualise progress, interactions, and support pathways – helping to make advising more meaningful and visible.
Figure 1: Prototype interface showing student advising record and interactions
Looking ahead
This work represents a shift from transactional advising towards a more connected and data-informed approach. By making advising visible and trackable, the project supports more proactive and personalised support for students.
As the system develops, it will also enable better evaluation of advising activity and impact — helping Newcastle University continuously improve how it supports student success
Figure 1: Prototype interface showing student advising record and interactions
We’ll continue to share updates as the project progresses towards its initial launch in 2026.
Since joining the University in April 2024, I’ve been fortunate to witness and contribute to growing developments in our Digital Skills provision. While I’m proud of the progress we’ve made, it’s important to acknowledge the strong foundation laid by my predecessor, Dr. Michelle Miller, and the contributions of the Technology-Enhanced Learning team. Their hard work has created a robust infrastructure, which I’ve been able to build upon by adapting and updating existing resources, as well as exploring new opportunities to expand and enhance our offerings.
Currently, I, along with my team of demonstrators, continue to deliver in-person workshops to undergraduate and postgraduate students across the Faculty of Medical Sciences and the Science, Agriculture, and Engineering faculty. I’ve also maintained close collaboration with module leaders and key stakeholders to address the growing demand for digital skills resources among our students. This has led to the creation of new courses, tailored support for specific modules, guidance for postgraduate public talks, and the expansion of our team of postgraduate demonstrators.
Website Revamp
Our website, www.digitalskills.ncl.ac.uk, the central hub for our courses and resources, has recently undergone a visual and functional overhaul. My goal was to make it more accessible, device-friendly, and easier to navigate, ensuring that both internal and external users can access our materials. The website hosts a wealth of resources, including workshop materials and tools to help students and staff enhance their digital literacy.
Key content areas remain, such as:
Data Analysis
Document Management
Poster & Presentation Skills
Specialist Software
I’ve also introduced new dedicated sections:
Introductory Series: Offering beginner-friendly materials for various software tools.
Additional Resources: A curated collection of miscellaneous courses and guidance to support diverse needs.
Additionally, the website continues to host online induction content for multiple university areas. These inductions have been refined to incorporate guidance from governing bodies and share best practices, including Canvas guidance on AI and cybersecurity, software package downloads, and EndNote support. These materials have been sourced with thanks to the Learning and Teaching Development Service, Library Services, and NUIT.
To further showcase the expertise of our team, I’ve also added links to our current postgraduate demonstrators’ current studies and LinkedIn profiles. This not only highlights their contributions but also provides students and staff with opportunities to connect with and learn from their diverse experiences.
New Courses and Collaborations
Through collaboration with various faculty areas, I’ve developed three new courses to meet the evolving needs of our students:
Excel Foundations: Designed for all skill levels, this modular course covers everything from spreadsheet basics to advanced data analysis tools and creating impactful tables and charts.
Introduction to BioRender: A beginner-friendly guide to BioRender, tailored for those new to scientific illustration software.
CMB3000: Project Write-up: A comprehensive course covering IT and library skills essential for Stage 3 Biomedical Sciences dissertations, including specialised EndNote guidance provided by Richard Lumb.
These courses reflect our commitment to equipping students with the digital skills they need to succeed in their academic and professional journeys.
New Recruits in the Student Demonstrator Team
This academic year, I’ve been fortunate to work with an exceptional group of postgraduate student demonstrators. Their expertise and diverse knowledge have been invaluable in supporting workshop attendees, offering context-specific assistance that resonates with students’ needs.
Our returning demonstrators include:
Douglas Amobi Amoke (Engineering)
Mien Tran (Gender Studies)
Brittni Bradford (Cultural Property Protection)
Jennifer Cooke (Horror Media)
Chinenye Ekemezie (Biosciences)
We’ve also welcomed new additions to the team:
Algimantas Beinoravicius (Nutrition)
Tiancheng Ren (Urban Planning)
Duong Nguyen (Medicine)
Maria Brigaoanu (Molecular Biology)
Nana Yaw Aboagye (Bio-signal and Medical Image Analysis)
Their contributions have greatly enriched our provision. Additionally, I’ve supported departing demonstrators with fellowship claims, references, and other professional development opportunities.
Expanding Our Reach and Looking Ahead
While my team’s primary focus remains within FMS, we’ve continued to deliver digital skills sessions to postgraduate students in SAgE and are exploring opportunities to extend our support across the institution. Looking ahead, we’re excited to expand our offerings, including:
Enhanced training on SPSS for statistical analysis.
Digital organisation systems to boost student productivity.
New resources for Python and other in-demand programming languages.
We’re eager to continue supporting students and staff in developing essential digital skills and look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead. We encourage students and staff to explore our updated resources, attend workshops, and reach out with suggestions on how we can further support digital skills development.
If you’d like to discuss how our team can assist you, please email me at: Elliot.cruikshanks@ncl.ac.uk
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.
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.
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).
Screenshot of Copilot Notebook
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.
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.
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
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.
Search in a Teams Channel
Search in a chat
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.
Posting an Announcement
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.
Forwarding a chat message
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”.
Common menu icons
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
