Month: December 2020

Branching Activities

Following a request to create branching activities for the BMS Health and Safety Course, we have added an example of a branching activity to the FMS Community so that others can try these out. These activities can be used to present a scenario with a range of options for students to follow, like a choose-your-own-adventure book.

A branching activity was included in the Health and Safety course this year to guide students through a scenario where a fellow student becomes unwell. At each stage, some information and a set of choices is presented. The student clicks through to discover the consequences of their choices, and finally, an outcome is presented. Students can run through the activity multiple times to try out different paths through the scenario.

These activities are built by setting up pages in Canvas to represent each stage and adding buttons that link pages together in the right order depending on the choices.

You can try out an example branching activity in the FMS Community. This example has 13 different pages, including a landing page where students start the activity. The number of pages you need to create will depend on how complex you want your scenario to be.

If you’d like to try making your own branching activity, you can find instructions here: https://ncl.instructure.com/courses/30988/pages/creating-branching-activities.

360° Images

Prompted by the need to show students FMS teaching labs, we have added some information around 360° images to the FMS Community, including example images and how these images are captured, processed and made ready for viewing. This work results in images which can be viewed on screen or using a VR headset.

360 pan of lab showing navigation through the tour
This is a low-quality preview of the real output.

These images have a variety of uses, including:

  • allowing students to view places they may otherwise never see in person
  • allowing students to see facilities such as labs before they arrive on campus
  • students can familiarise themselves with the layout of a room or building
  • taking activities in a safe controlled realistic environment, for example identifying hazards without putting themselves at risk
  • helping students learning at a distance to feel like they are part of the institution

As well as single images, it is possible to connect a series of images to create tours. Users can then click one place to the next in a series of linked 360 images – like in Google Map Street View. Video tours can also be created.

Recently we used these images to provide a virtual induction to FMS labs as part of a health and safety course. To see the full case study, visit the FMS Community.