Last month we welcomed Michael Hughes to the FMS TEL team, as Learning Technologies Developer.
Michael is one of six Web Developers within the team who create and maintain Web-based systems which support learning and teaching across the Faculty, University and beyond. He brings with him great enthusiasm and experience of developing innovative systems. One of his first projects is to work with the RolePlayNorth team to redevelop an old, but business-critical, system that has reached end of life. He will be co-developing this with Dan Plummer (FMS TEL systems usually have a least two developers, to help ensure nothing is one person deep!) and collaborating with the wider team in other activities.
“Coming from a manual labour background and specifically working in the Traffic management and Utilities industry for the past 8 years. Seeing a lack of development and online tools to help assist doing the job led me to learning how to code.
Industries like those are the backbone of the economy and the lack of basic tech was eye opening. Working one day I asked one of my more experienced co workers about the marker post locations (white sticks 100 meters apart on the motorway) which we used everyday to plan out roadworks. Finding out that most workers didn’t have the information where they are and if your traveling from say A69 or the A66 coming to the A1 you have no idea if you have to travel south or north to come south as to not miss your starting location for roadworks or even worse a car crash which could mean a 30 minute turn around if guessed incorrectly.
This idea pushed me to working on the project that got me the learning technologies position here at Newcastle University.”
Michael Hughes
We are excited to have Michael on the team and cannot wait to see what he will accomplish!
All of our posts about this conference can be seen under the tag NULTConf2022.
This workshop was presented in person for the first time at the Learning and Teaching Conference 2022. Newcastle University staff wishing to access the resources and the recording of the online version can do so here.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the Learning and Teaching Conference!
FMS TEL are well-represented at the University Learning and Teaching Conference 2022. We look forward to seeing you at the conference, and hearing what you think of our sessions, videos and posters! All of our posts about this conference can be seen under the tag NULTConf2022.
A showcase of some of our work from 2021 and our submissions to the Learning and Teaching Conference 2022.
The FMS TEL team have collaborated on a wide range of projects throughout 2021, some of which we have submitted to the internal Learning and Teaching Conference 2022.
Adopting a flexible approach to professional written exams during COVID
Staff from the School of Dental Sciences and FMS-TEL have collaborated throughout the pandemic to ensure summative assessments continue in a robust fashion to satisfy regulatory requirements. This required a flexible approach to online assessment which continues to be important as the uncertainty continues. This presentation details the challenges we have faced and solutions we have utilised, offering practical advice for those who may wish to run online exams in the future on any platform.
Sarah Rolland and Luisa Wakeling, School of Dental Sciences
Audio Commentary and Structured Asynchronous Teaching of Communication Skills in Dietetics and Nutrition
Role-play and peer observation are widely used as educational methods for teaching communication skills in healthcare education, which has become a greater challenge to implement during the pandemic. In the context of dietetics and nutrition, our students developed communication skills using innovative audio resources. This video will discuss student voice survey findings regarding engagement and quality perceptions of the resources, and advise those wishing to create similar tasks, including task setup and technical support.
Susan Lennie, Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences
Can Scaffolding help Reflective Practice?
This workshop sets out the aims of incorporating reflective practice with scaffolded approaches in your teaching contexts and invites you to explore their potential value in your programmes or modules. Structured reflective templates are one of the key developments of the new NU Reflect system, which are currently being piloted. This session will also offer case studies to demonstrate how colleagues have implemented reflective templates to support the student reflective process within their contexts.
Patrick Rosenkranz, Simon Cotterill, Sam Flowers, David Gillies, David Teasdale
Content Evolution
A brief look at the FMS bespoke VLE Ngage, and its special features which were designed for our distance learning programmes. This session will cover how we migrated our content into Canvas without losing functionality and the challenges we encountered. We will also discuss how the content has evolved during the pandemic and the changes made to enhance the student experience.
Emily Smith, FMS TEL
Creating and Using Animations to Explain Concepts
This video demonstrates a how animations can be used to demonstrate concepts in teaching. It showcases advanced animations that are used to show complex concepts and allow for dynamic and interactive content to be shared on screen. Should you not have access to high-end software, the video also shows what can be achieved using PowerPoint animations and shows some tools that can be used to develop understanding beyond static diagrams or simple videos.
Ashley Reynolds, FMS TEL
Designing Convertible Teaching
This workshop provides colleagues with practical tips on how to design teaching that can be converted between online and offline, and synchronous and asynchronous delivery styles with minimal effort. Participants will think through resource design using examples, and apply this knowledge to their own resources brought to the session. Participants will take away technological shortcuts that reduce the burden when changing delivery styles, as well as an understanding of how to design inherently flexible resources.
Eleanor Gordon, FMS TEL
Exploring 3D Anatomy: Collaborative Development of an Inclusive Online Course Supporting Universal Enhancement of Transferable Observational Skills
This talk covers the development of a MOOC which develops students’ skills in 3D Spatial Awareness in the context of the study of anatomy. This collaboration between Newcastle University and the University of Cape Town focuses on specific art-based and technology enhanced learning exercises to develop skills that will enhance students’ capabilities in clinical observation, diagnosis, and surgical training. Prior research and development of specific observation methodologies, their deployment in an online environment, and students’ learning outcomes will be shared.
Iain Keenan, School of Medical Education
Flipping case-based learning online in response to the pandemic
This presentation shares practice from rapid changes made to ‘flip’ learning and teaching in MB BS, in response to the pandemic. This is in the context of a new Clinical Decision Making course, originally designed to use online cases to supplement primarily face-to-face learning and teaching in both UK and NuMed. The pandemic gave need to rapidly shift to predominantly online delivery with more asynchronous delivery. We will demonstrate adaptions made and discuss lessons learned.
John Moss, David Kennedy, Dan Plummer
Staff development: collaboration across continents for using TEL
A study across campuses of Newcastle University into perceptions of TEL use found that staff in the NUMed and Singapore campuses felt they lagged behind in training for using TEL. The FMSTEL team responded with an online conference, collaborating with NUMed, at a time accessible to all. Various topics included specific technologies and embedding online transnational cross-campus teaching in the curriculum. Successful, it may become an annual event.
Alison Clapp, David Kennedy, Ruth Valentine, John Moss and Bhavani Veasuvalingam, FMS and NUMed
Using Canvas Commons to Supply and Support Student Learning Opportunities
What is Canvas Commons, how does it work, and why is it useful for disseminating online learning material? I will present examples of tutorials I have shared and induction material. By using Commons we can promote our material and the University to the wider Canvas Community. This will address the theme of Changing Practice through the Pandemic by focusing on the use of Canvas to provide excellent learning opportunities.
This post summarises posts from 2021 – thank you to all of our contributors!
The blog is now a year old! It’s been fantastic to see our readership grow over the year, and we hope you have enjoyed learning more about the work we do in FMS TEL, and have found our tips, resources and events useful and enjoyable.
We would be very grateful if you could spare a few minutes to tell us what you think about the blog, and what you would like to see more of in 2022.
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 2022… feel free to drop us a line if you have something to share.
Over the past few months, the FMS TEL team have been working on bringing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to life. The course, Exploring 3D Anatomy, is an active, hands-on, and engaging online course now available to Newcastle students and staff! The course was designed by Dr Iain Keenan of Newcastle University and Mr Leonard Shapiro of the University of Cape Town.
3D spatial awareness is a cognitive function. Improving it improves students’ 3D visualisation ability and spatial skills in anatomy learning.
In our experience, medical, dental, and other healthcare students can experience significant challenges in 3D spatial anatomy. Because of the three-dimensional arrangement of the human body, student spatial awareness can be a major influence on their anatomical education. In this online course, students can practice several easy-to-follow, hands-on exercises that we have designed to address and improve 3D spatial awareness. Video demonstrations by Iain and Leonard guide students through each activity, which involve the use of readily available household objects such as a piece of fruit, a jar, or a fork.
As simple as these exercises are to follow and carry out, the effect of such activities on improving 3D spatial awareness can be notable. What’s more, the exercises can be enjoyable too!
The Fruit Exercise: a guided dissection of this 3D object can improve 3D spatial understanding of the anatomical planes.
The practical exercises in the course are demonstrated by Iain and Leonard on video, allowing students to access the content at their own pace. These videos show the exercises in detail and allow students to hear the conversation as the exercise unfolds. Videos are short and simple to follow, and have been captioned by the team to ensure clarity.
Leonard Demonstrating the Fruit Exercise with a LemonIain Starting the Fruit Exercise with a Lime
All Newcastle University staff and students can join the Canvas course, which is structured in three parts and requires around 4 hours of activity in total. We hope to expand access to an extended version of the course in 2022/23. For further information, please contact Dr Iain Keenan.
Contacts
Dr Iain Keenan, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, School of Medical Education, Newcastle University
Mr Leonard Shapiro, Observation and Spatial Awareness Teacher, Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town
Further Reading
This course is supported by the following research:
Backhouse, M., Fitzpatrick, M., Hutchinson, J., Thandi, C.S. and Keenan, I.D. (2017), Improvements in anatomy knowledge when utilizing a novel cyclical “Observe-Reflect-Draw-Edit-Repeat” learning process. Anat Sci Educ, 10: 7-22. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1616
Ben Awadh, A., Clark, J., Clowry, G. and Keenan, I.D. (2021), Multimodal Three-Dimensional Visualization Enhances Novice Learner Interpretation of Basic Cross-Sectional Anatomy. Anat Sci Educ. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.2045
Branson TM, Shapiro L, Venter RG. Observation of Patients’ 3D Printed Anatomical Features and 3D Visualisation Technologies Improve Spatial Awareness for Surgical Planning and in-Theatre Performance. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2021;1334:23-37. Available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34476743/
Reid, S., Shapiro, L. and Louw, G. (2019), How Haptics and Drawing Enhance the Learning of Anatomy. Anat Sci Educ, 12: 164-172. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1807
Shapiro, L., Bell, K., Dhas, K., Branson, T., Louw, G. and Keenan, I.D. (2020), Focused Multisensory Anatomy Observation and Drawing for Enhancing Social Learning and Three-Dimensional Spatial Understanding. Anat Sci Educ, 13: 488-503. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1929
Are you supervising a postgraduate student? If so, consider recommending Digital Skills workshops to help them with the process of formatting their thesis.
Digital Skills offers a series of four workshops specifically designed to help postgraduate students to format their thesis effectively and efficiently in Microsoft Word to University standards.
Sessions cover the use of Styles, caption and cross-referencing, customising multilevel lists, managing images and tables, modifying EndNote output, and merging chapter files. These skills provide students with the ability to create a successfully formatted thesis.
The first in the series of sessions takes place on 21st October 10-12pm. Encourage your students to sign up now via Workshops. Alternatively, students can complete the tutorial in their own time via the Digital Skills website.
Inspera is the new Digital Exam System available at the University. Inspera offers a wide range of features covering a large variety of exam styles. Colleagues wishing to learn more about Inspera are strongly encouraged to attend the event below, and explore the online guidance available on the LTDS website.
Further to our previous post, there have been some changes to the launch events as below.
12 October 2021 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM UK, 5:00 PM-18:30 PM Malaysia (via Zoom)
Inspera is the new Digital Exam System available at the University. Inspera offers a wide range of features covering a large variety of exam styles. Colleagues wishing to learn more about Inspera are strongly encouraged to attend the event below, and explore the online guidance available on the LTDS website.
Come along to one of the online events for live demonstrations, the chance to speak with our Inspera colleagues and to find out more about uses for digital assessments.
The FMS TEL Conference ran at the beginning of this month. Fifteen events ran in the week beginning 6th September 2021, with diverse themes covering technology in teaching, technical guides and inspiration, and how we interact with technology as people.
Sessions were attended by staff from Newcastle and from NUMed, with over 150 session bookings across the conference. Feedback from attendees has been positive, and colleagues shared their plans for implementing their learning from the conference.
Many thanks to the session hosts, everyone working behind the scenes, and to the attendees for joining us.
Session resources can be found on our Canvas and MLE communities.
