Author: Tracy

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.

FMS TEL stand

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.

Introducing Cameo for PowerPoint

FMS TEL have been checking out an exciting new PowerPoint feature from Microsoft. It allows you to put your live video feed on a PowerPoint slide. You can add transitions and other effects to it, just as you can to other objects.

Check out this video for more information:

More details can be found on the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog website.

GigXR

FMS TEL recently attended a presentation on a mixed reality platform called GigXR, a clinical simulation platform with a number of apps, including HoloScenarios and HoloHuman.

The target audience is mainly medical education courses at the moment.

This technology aims to:

  • create a consistency of experience for all students
  • provide repetitive training in a safe-fail environment
  • reach rural learners
  • reduce instructor time

How it works

A headset is connected wirelessly to a computer which generates a hologram of a patient into the room through the headset. There is equipment nearby, such as oxygen masks and blood pressure cuffs. You can interact with items and use them on the patient.

You are able to insert your own 3D digital objects into the software. For example, if you have created a 3D image of a heart from CT scans. GigXR can create a holographic version which you can view through the headset.

Conversational AI is being integrated, so you can talk to the patient and ask questions. Currently this is in text format using ChatGPT, but developments are being made and hopefully soon you will be able to actually speak to the patient.

For more information, see the Gig XR website

Adding Audio to pdf Documents

During the recent Teaching and Learning Conference, prompted by Michelle Miller’s poster on Adobe Acrobat, we were asked if it was possible to add audio to a pdf document. Here’s how to do it:

Add Audio in Adobe Acrobat Reader

  • Click on Comments
  • Click on the attachments icon
  • Select Record Audio
  • Click the cursor where you want the audio to appear. A Sounder Recorder prompt will appear.
  • You now have two options:
    • record directly into acrobat
    • browse for an existing file

Record audio comments directly into Acrobat

  • Click the Record button and speak into your microphone. Click the Stop button when you have finished.
  • Click OK to add the recorded audio
  • Select your preferred icon and colour, then click OK

Embed an existing audio file

  • Click the Browse button
  • Navigate to your existing audio file
  • Click Open
  • Click OK to add the audio file
  • Select your preferred icon and colour, then click OK

Note: this only supports uncompressed WAV and AIFF files.

Three Rivers Conference: Escape Room Style Seminars in Neurological Clinical Reasoning

Following their successful presentation at our FMS TEL Conference, Rebecca Handcock and Bas Olthof presented at the regional Three Rivers Conference on 27 June 2023, discussing their escape room style seminars in Neurological Clinical Reasoning.

Students are organised into groups of 6-8 in learning labs. They work through eight clinical cases to identify the neurological diagnosis through peer-led clinical reasoning. Each case has hidden puzzles which students complete to get more information for their diagnosis.

Students are provided with a link to access the first puzzle. They must put in the most likely diagnosis before they can proceed to access the scan images. They receive automated feedback from the system, as well as feedback from tutors who facilitate the seminars.

The exercises help with critical thinking and problem solving skills, diagnosis skills, communication, teamworking, and create a little bit of competition between groups.

The escape rooms are created using H5P, which can consist of drag and drop exercises, branching scenarios, images with information hotspots detailing medical history and symptoms etc.

Resources

Special Characters and Symbols

The FMS TEL team have been discussing using special characters in documents. What symbols do we use most? What’s the quickest way of creating them? Do they create any issues?

ALT codes

Using ALT codes can speed up this process. On a Windows PC you can hold down the ALT key whilst keying the corresponding number. When you release the ALT key, the special character will appear.

Some ALT codes for Microsoft Word

SymbolALT Code #Description
@64at
&38ampersand
©0169copyright
®0174registered
™0153trademark
€0128Euro
£0163Pound
✓10003tick
✔10004bold tick
✅9989tick in box
→26right arrow
←27left arrow
↑24up arrow
↓25down arrow
↕18up down arrow
☺1white smiley face
☻2black smiley face
?128512yellow smiley face
♥3heart
÷0247division
×0215multiply
° 176degree
•7bullet
★9733black star
☆9734white star
♪13quaver musical note
♫14beamed quaver musical note

Find more ALT codes here https://altcodesguru.com/ and here https://www.alt-codes.net/ or google for other sites.

Some of these characters may look more like colour emojis to you – this is because different browsers and devices sometimes read and display the characters slightly differently.

Windows Emojis

Alternatively you can quickly select emojis in Windows using the following key combination:

Windows Key + . (windows dot)

You will see a popup box with lots of different symbols. Just select the symbol you require. You can also type to filter or search for the one you want. Try Americanisms (such as ‘check’ for ‘tick’) if you can’t find something.

This works in Microsoft apps and some other text input areas, such as the Canvas Rich Text Editor. Screenreaders will read out the emoji’s name, so don’t put them at the start of sentences or titles. Adding emojis like this can help add a splash of colour, or you can use them to visually distinguish types of task or information.

Macs

Key codes on a Mac are a little more complex, but this guide can take you through it.

Problems with special characters

Sometimes special characters can cause issues if the document you are creating is being used as a source of data for another platform. Not everything will correctly translate the character outside MS Word. This is to do with how some datasets store the character information, older standards like ASCII do not have a wide selection of special characters available.

A real world example of this would be the uploading of core skill to the MLE (Medical Learning Environment) website. The MLE itself may choose to ignore any characters it cannot translate, which although not ideal, is not a major issue. Unfortunately those core skills are also used in a mobile app that students can record against. The app will simply refuse to display the information. Currently there are processes in place to identify and replace these characters, ideally we would update all our platforms to use Unicodes instead of the older ASCII standard.

Summary

Emojis, symbols and special characters might be needed in your content, or you might choose to use them to add extra meaning to your course pages or documents. Sometimes they will display slightly differently on different devices or in different apps. If your content is to be used as a source of data for another program, or copied to other platforms, please try to avoid using them, as sometimes they can cause issues. 🙂

Taking Ctrl: Incognito Mode

The Problem

You’d like to quickly open an incognito browser window in Google Chrome. Usually you would click on the three dots on the top right and click New incognito window.

The Solution

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge

Windows: CTRL + Shift + N

Mac: Command+Shift+N

Firefox

Windows: Ctrl-Shift-P

Mac: Command-Shift-P

Safari

Mac: Command+Shift+N

The Result

A new incognito window opens instantly. You can browse the web without Chrome recording every page and activity in its history.

Taking Ctrl: Reopen Closed Tabs

The Problem

You’ve closed some tabs in your browser, but you want them back. How can you do this quickly?

The Solution

The following works for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Windows: Ctrl+Shift+T

Mac: Command+Shift+T

The Result

If you key that shortcut once, it’ll bring up the last tab you closed. Hit it again, and it’ll bring up the one before that. And so on.

Create Your Own WordPress Blog

So, you like our FMS TEL blog and you’d like to have something similar. How do you do it?

Go to blogs.ncl.ac.uk. You will see the following page with a choice to create a personal blog or a team blog. FMS TEL use the Team Blog as everyone in our team contributes to it.

Click on the button for your choice of blog. You will then be asked to sign in.

Team Blog


For a Team Blog, if you are not already logged in, you will have to login using your University email (username@newcastle.ac.uk) and password. You will then be presented with a form to request your Team Blog.

You can also use the form here to request a team blog: Team Blog Request Form

Personal Blog

For a Personal Blog, if you are not already logged in, you will just enter your username and password . You will then be presented with a form to register your personal blog site.

Rules and Policies

Please make sure you read the university Rules and Policies regarding publishing content on university servers and applications.

More Information

More information can be found at the IT Services Blogs page.
Download the Blog Service User Guide

Taking Ctrl: Undo and Redo

The Problem

Maybe you have deleted a lot of text and changed your mind, or decided you wanted it after all. Maybe you undid some of your work but changed your mind. How can you get it back without starting from scratch? You can use Undo to reverse your last action, or Redo to put it back. You can undo and redo up to 20 of your last actions in Microsoft applications.  All actions must be undone or redone in the order they were done.

The Method

UNDO

Windows: Ctrl + Z
Mac: Command + Z

REDO

Windows
Microsoft and other software: Ctrl + Y
Adobe Software: Ctrl + Shift + Z

Mac
All software: Command + Shift + Z

The Result

Your text is restored without you having to type it all in again. Whatever action you previously undid you can redo (there are exceptions though, and the Undo and Redo commands will be unavailable if the previous actions cannot be undone or repeated, e.g. clicking a command on the File tab in Microsoft applications.)