thank you – FMS TEL

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.

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.

2022 Roundup

This post summarises posts from 2022 – thank you to all of our contributors!

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 2022. If you have any suggestions for content for 2023 we would love to hear from you.

Awards and Prizes

Ashley Reynolds and Eleanor Gordon were delighted to be announced winners of the ‘Best Video Award’ during the NU Teaching & Learning Conference for their video ‘Creating and using animations to explain concepts’.

Eleanor Gordon (left) and Ashley Reynolds (right)

Work done by the School of Dentistry and FMS TEL Team won first prize at the Trans-European Pedagogic Anatomical Research Group Hybrid Conference this year, for the presentation on ‘Adopting a flexible approach to professional anatomy spotter exams during COVID’. Newcastle Staff can view the poster here for an overview or read the internal news item on SharePoint.

2022 Conferences

For the second year running we ran our very own FMS TEL conference. We had sessions on Accessibility, Augmented Reality, Lab Teaching, Escape Rooms and more. The materials are available on the FMS TEL Conference 2022 page.

Several members of the FMS TEL team also attended the NULT Conference this year, giving strong representation of the team. We delivered sessions on Developing audio commentated interviews, Designing Convertible Teaching and Using Canvas Commons.

Technology, Software and Systems

WRS Screenshot: individual workload summary

This year we showcased The FMS Workload Reporting System (WRS) and the new Personal Tutoring Application.

We explored 3D scanners and 360° Cameras and advanced our use of Canvas and PowerPoint.

Tips and Guides

We did quick fix posts for Screen Sharing with Presenter View, Additional scroll bars in canvas and Searching Outlook Emails.

We have shared guides on Captioning, Transcription and, how to improve teaching with Motion tracking in Recorded Presentations and the use of timers in synchronous teaching.

Assessment and Feedback were important topics this year with posts on Instant Feedback, Live Feedback, Virtual Oral Presentations and Effective Rubrics.

Thank You!

2021 Roundup

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.

2021 Posts

We have covered the introduction of new software such as H5P and Inspera. We have also posted a range of teaching and learning case studies such as using Zoom for online teaching, using online tools to generate discussion, and build community.

We have highlighted specialist work within the FMS TEL team, such as graphic design, animation, video editing and 3D imaging, as well as covering specialist software and accessibility. Hybrid teaching and blended working have also been important topics this year.

Issues of data privacy, confidentiality and copyright have been covered, we have adapted many courses to new online formats, and converted face-to-face teaching to interactive online resources.

We have shared many tips on how to quickly achieve complex-seeming tasks, such as removing the date from a screen cast, and creating your own gifs from videos. We have also shared even more guides in the FMS TEL Community on Canvas and the MLE, and our webinars and Conference.