Category: Conference

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

MOOC Adventures: From Conception to Reality – Dr Iain Keenan – NULTConf

Iain’s opening slide

Iain Keenan presented this lightning talk at the Newcastle University Learning and Teaching Conference 2023. He presented the MOOC we have been working on for some time, and shared insights about MOOC development. The talk is available for Newcastle staff to watch via ReCap.

As well as sharing the course content, structure and research behind the approaches involved, Iain also highlighted how helpful it has been to work alongside FMS TEL to bring the course to life.

To find out more about the course, take a look at the trailer below.

The course trailer

Using Adobe Acrobat to Improve Accessibility

Michelle Miller shared her work in digital skills and accessibility at the Learning and Teaching Conference in March this year. This poster shows how you can improve your PDFs’ accessibility using Adobe Acrobat Pro, including common issues flagged by Ally, the accessibility checker in Canvas. All colleagues have access to this software.

The poster can be viewed alongside other submissions on the conference site, or Download the full-size PDF.

NULTConf – Video from FMS TEL

The Learning and Teaching Conference in March gave Gemma and I the chance to present a video about our current ERDP research project.

Our research focuses on engagement with online learning materials within the Faculty of Medical Sciences and NUMed. The full video can be viewed on the conference playlist.

FMS TEL Stand – L&T Conference 2023

It was nice to see some familiar faces and meet new colleagues at last week’s Learning and Teaching Conference. Members of the FMS TEL team took turns answering queries during sessions breaks. We also had the opportunity to attend the talks ourselves, and pick up some helpful tips and tricks!

FMS TEL stand
The stand!

At the desk we were pleased to see a number of visitors take copies of our booklet, showcasing some of the best posts from the FMS TEL blog.

If you were unable to attend the conference and you really wanted a booklet, we’ve got you covered!

FMS TEL Conference 2022 – behind the scenes

This post is a review of the conference experience by FMS TEL members John Keogan and Andy Stokes.

This years conference was going to be a bit different to any conference we had ran in the past, the decision was made for the 2022 conference to be hybrid! We would run in-person presentations, online only sessions, and some sessions would be a hybrid of both. We were excited to take advantage of the video-conferencing technologies on offer within the University.

Using lessons learnt from last years online version, we set out tasks to complete and deadlines to meet.

The Tasks

clipboard with list

We divided the main tasks between us and ran through the list of jobs involved in preparing for the conference. We quickly realised that there was lot more involved than we initially thought!

The main tasks included:

  • timetabling
  • booking rooms
  • communications (including mail merges)
  • creating online conference materials

One aspect of the preparation was getting word out about the conference. We approached schools within the faculty and asked them to put up posters in areas with heavy footfall, as well as staffrooms. We put up posters in cafes, corridors and even lifts – please let us know if you saw them! We also requested that the campus messaging screens carried information about the conference in FMS areas. 

Tips

Room Bookings

  • Consider your criteria before booking, for example:
    • ‘Is the room big enough?’
    • ‘Do the speakers work?’
    • ‘Can we connect a laptop to the projectors?’
  • The room bookings website is not always accurate when you nominate the relative criteria; i.e. ‘Hybrid’, ‘videoconference’ etc.
  • Give yourself enough time to visit the rooms in person (It’s also worthwhile booking the rooms for when you plan to test them, as they can be snapped up pretty quickly in term time).
  • Reserved your rooms well in advance! 

Technology

  • Contact the Audio Visual team for a demonstration of the hybrid technology. They showed us how to set up and use the cameras and mics, and also how to troubleshoot common problems.
  • Consider your booking platform and its limitations, we used workshops.ncl which required us to use an iCal maker so delegates could add the events to their diaries.
  • Familiarise yourself with video editing software. As a team we edited the recordings using a mix of ReCap, Premiere Pro and Adobe Rush.
  • Schedule a block of time to review captions. We have some excellent posts on how to edit your captions.

Conclusion

Overall, the conference was a great success and we all enjoyed our time being part of the 2022 FMS TEL Conference team.

Being new to running a conference we developed skills and knowledge during the journey. The encouragement and support from our team helped ensure that we fulfilled our tasks and that looming deadlines were met.

We learned things that we will do different, or better, next year and we hope the tips shared in this post will be a good starting point for anyone wanting to run their own conference.

We ALL Draw!

During the FMS TEL Conference, Leonard Shapiro of the University of Cape Town presented an overview of the many ways in which people draw, dispelled myths about the ‘quality’ of a drawing, and covered some of the many ways in which drawing can be useful in learning and in communication once we stop judging ourselves on our artistic skill.

You can watch Leonard’s talk in Panopto.

The university has a range of tools that allow us to draw for learning and communication, and draw collaboratively when teaching in person and online, such as smart boards, interactive whiteboards, and collaborative whiteboards in Zoom and Teams, as well as note making apps on devices we have in our pockets.

Drawing as a method to understand 3D anatomical structures is central to Leonard’s work – how might drawing allow your students to take a different viewpoint in your subject?

You may also wish to consider the approaches and methods used in the other linked FMS TEL videos below:

FMS TEL Conference 2022 – Digital Posters

The FMS TEL Conference 2022 is up and running.

To accompany the 16 sessions running between 7th-11th November from 08:00 GMT / 16:00 MYT each day, there are some digital posters which you can access below.

Using Adobe Acrobat to Improve Accessibility pdf

Michelle Miller, PhD – FMS TEL
Using Adobe Acrobat’s Accessibility tool and how its use can improve the documents we provide to our students and colleagues.

DOWNLOAD

A formal case- based peer assisted learning session in undergraduate medical curriculum: Malaysian medical students’ thoughts and beliefs pdf

Dr Alice Kurien, Senior Lecturer, NUMed
Peer assisted learning (PAL) model is being increasingly implemented in many universities as an important active learning support tool to facilitate constructive learning and to enhance the confidence level of students. Several studies have identified the various benefits of peer assisted learning in undergraduate medical education, such as enjoyable learning environment, improved knowledge acquisition, teamwork, opportunity for self-assessment, and motivation to become teachers and mentors in their future carrier. One of the outcomes expected of doctors is to see themselves as teachers and mentors in their future carrier (GMC, 2015).

DOWNLOAD

Peer Assisted Learning in Undergraduate Medical  Curriculum-A Literature Review pdf

Dr Vasantha Subramaniyam, Clinical Senior Lecturer, and Dr Alice Kurien, Senior Lecturer, NUMed
A career in health profession does not just limit to patient care, but includes clinical teaching, research, and administrative duties. To address this effectively GMC recommends to introduce teaching to medical students (GMC,2015). Acting upon this advice, many institutions have revived and started implementing an ancient teaching methodology used by Socrates & Plato, the Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) (Topping, 1998). PAL is a broader umbrella term which includes many entities like Peer learning & teaching, Peer mentoring, Peer leadership and Peer assessments. (Henning, 2008). PAL has been noted  to improve the student engagement, self confidence, performance and overall performance (Smith, 2018).

DOWNLOAD

3D Holograms in Teaching – NULTConf

Dr Aleksey Kozikov, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics presented on 3D holograms and showed examples of using them in lecture theatres.

Dr Aleksey Kozikov discussed the uses of 3D holograms and showed examples, including the projection of lab equipment, objects, and presenters into lecture theatres.

In traditional teaching approaches, students are taught in a sitting and listening manner. To provide a more participatory learning experience, help students to visualise, clarify the taught concepts and enhance the way students learn, we are planning to introduce 3D “holograms” into the real space learning environment. We will discuss ideas to use holograms of research facilities and extend to any practical activities that are otherwise not possible to do in a lecture theatre

This can enhance in-person teaching and could be a resource used in FMS.

There could be live projections of speakers or leading experts in the field, who could not be there in person. They could join the conversation from abroad but look like they are physically in the room with other speakers.

Lecturers could explain a piece of equipment which was previously too cumbersome to transport to lectures. Students could see a visible representation of equipment beside them as they discuss it.

We could show experiments without the person and equipment physically being in the room. This could be done in multiple rooms simultaneously, relieving the need for large lectures halls or repeated sessions.

Resources