eCoffee @ SGH

We had a shorter eCoffee programme this year but no less packed with useful content! The opportunity for colleagues to come together and discuss how technologies can enhance our teaching, learning and working practices is always appreciated.

It’s been another year packed with tips, tools and tricks for eCoffee@SGH. We’ve been inspired by colleagues across Medicine and Health Sciences, sharing valuable ways technology is being used to enhance education and working practice. Colleagues from Digital Learning have also led a number of sessions, inviting discussion on how particular tools and techniques might be used in healthcare education.

It’s been a while since the “@SGH” part of eCoffee has been strictly accurate, but we’ve had another year of valuable virtual meet-ups.

In person, eCoffee@SGH provided opportunities not only for peer learning and support with TEL tools and techniques but also for forging connections.  Since we’ve been meeting online, that opportunity has felt just as important – if not more so.  Sharing

At the point we launched this year’s search for examples of excellent use of virtual learning environments, we didn’t know we’d all be moving in!  With learning shifted to virtual spaces, it’s useful to reflect on what this year’s nominations

December’s eCoffee involved an experimental live event: could we run a session about video meetings simultaneously as a face-to-face session and online for remote participants? While this sounds like something that potentially could involve specialist equipment and planning, we took

Ahead of this month’s eCoffee we asked colleagues for recommendations for tools that support organisation, planning and efficiency, and took the opportunity during the session to try some of these out. Office 365 and Microsoft Teams Office 365 includes various

Medicine has seen continuing success over the seven years of the university’s Blackboard & VLE Awards, so in July’s eCoffee we explored some features of winning courses, sharing some ideas and inspiration ahead of the next academic year. Blackboard upgrade

In May’s eCoffee session we welcomed back Ayala Gordon and Jonny Vaughan from the Digital Team, to discuss how we provide simple, accessible, relevant, useful information, not just via university websites but digital services as a whole. In keeping with

As part of the Community of Practice sessions held monthly by the Digital Learning team, Joe Brett from the Digital Learning Media team presented an introductory talk on how to produce videos using modest filming equipment: a handycam/smartphone, audio recorder

What is Universal Design for Learning? Why does UDL matter? To understand what Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is, firstly, we need to look back at the origins of Universal Design. Architect Ron Mace coined the term “universal design” to

February’s eCoffee saw attendees taken on a series of virtual adventures, using Oculus Go headsets.  Recent university Virtual Reality (VR) projects include creating interactive 360 experiences from footage gathered on field trips.  This supports students in getting the most out of the trip by preparing

Panopto: not just lecture capture was our theme for December’s eCoffee, looking at the various ways Panopto can be used to support teaching, learning and assessment. The university help pages for Panopto at http://go.soton.ac.uk/panopto are a great source to help you get started, and

In October’s eCoffee we looked at ways Microsoft Teams can support collaborative working and learning.  Teams is part of Office 365 (https://www.southampton.ac.uk/365) and works in conjunction with Office 365’s SharePoint, helping build communication and context around documents stored here. Setting up After creating

We finished a year of exciting eCoffees with an inspiring session from Dr Siobhan Lynch.  Siobhan shared the story of the creation and development of the Personal Professional Development module for final year undergraduates, which is delivered predominantly online, while students are on

In June’s eCoffee, Jonny Vaughan, Ayala Gordon and Hayleigh Sidhu from the university’s Communications and Marketing team visited to share the work they’ve been doing shaping the university’s social media presence. New guidelines have been developed to support university users,

Caspian Priest led May’s eCoffee, taking us on a fascinating journey through the development of an app for research and intervention.  The Abreast of Health study delivers a brief electronic intervention to women attending breast clinics, taking the opportunity to highlight links

Clickers have provided a good way of involving learners more actively in lectures, and with mobile devices increasingly ubiquitous, quizzing, polling and feedback are becoming easier to integrate into taught sessions. At this month’s eCoffee session we explored some of

Kumu In 2018’s first e-coffee session, Simon Fraser demonstrated Kumu, a powerful tool for creating mind maps. Kumu allows detailed mind maps to be built, with an underlying structure and customisation options, for instance colour-coding for different categories. Once completed, mindmaps

In December’s eCoffee session, Nick Evans talked about his experiences in podcasting.  He and Steve Lee co-create the popular fortnightly podcast The Science Shed, described as “an irreverent ramble through the undergrowth of academia”.  The half-hour podcasts involve discussion of a range

In November’s e-coffee@SGH we explored some of the possibilities offered by H5P (https://h5p.org/) – a free, easy-to-use tool for creating interactive learning objects.  H5P offers a range of content types, with activities produced in a mobile-friendly html5 format. We had a look at various

July’s eCoffee took us on a tour through some of the tools we have explored over the year, with a chance to catch up with colleagues who have been putting them into action. The LifeLab team have introduced the LifeSaver

Final year medical student Callum Taylor led this month’s e-coffee@SGH session, with an inspiring look at some of the tools, projects and platforms that can help engage students.  It was packed full of useful tips and information and showcased some

(Scott Border @ SGH, 2017) May’s e-coffee@SGH was all about making videos and had one of the best turnouts with attendees getting excited to see Dr Scott Border from Anatomy within Medicine discussing his journey creating podcasts and videos for

Twitter was a popular theme for April’s e-coffee@SGH, with a great turnout to hear Penny Lee from Medicine’s Marketing team share lots of tips for top Tweeting.  Penny gave a brilliant presentation ‘Twitter for Scientists’, explaining what might be the

In this month’s e-coffee@SGH session, Daryl Peel from the Digital Learning team demonstrated two tools that can help users familiarise themselves with a physical space, or even use a physical space to help familiarise users with a topic. ActionBound offers

February’s e-coffee session was led by Sarah Fielding, exploring possible uses of Thinglink, a tool for making interactive diagrams and videos. Signing up for a basic account gives you access to upload 2D images and label these with a series of

December’s e-coffee@SGH explored some of the 12 apps of Christmas recommended by Dublin Institute of Technology and Regent’s University London. Both discuss how the apps suggested can be used in education, with case studies and examples. Sway is increasingly being

e-coffee@SGH builds on the iPAD coffee clubs that previously took place at SGH, exploring the use of mobile devices, but also sharing wider experiences and ideas around the use of technology. This month we looked at tools for creating quizzes and simple

At April’s iPAD coffee club Adam Warren (Senior Learning Designer, ILIaD) joined us to demonstrate various apps in response to requests raised at previous sessions. The conferencing tool Adobe Connect is useful for webinars and is licensed for up to

After last session’s inspiring introduction to Nearpod, it was great to hear that the Allergy team have been using this in their new ‘Teaching the Teachers to Teach’ module and it is being well received by students. This month’s iPAD

At SGH’s first iPAD coffee club of 2016, Andrew O’Malley, Stuart Morton and Lucy Law demonstrated Nearpod. The CLAS team have been using this to deliver interactive teaching sessions in Anatomy. Students enter a code to receive the session presentation

At a festive-themed iPAD coffee club we explored some of the 12 apps of Christmas recommended by the Dublin Institute of Technology. Andrew O’Malley has tweeted further details of apps recommended in response to various questions raised during the session.

This month’s iPAD coffee club focused on recording lectures and tutorials, with Veronica Hollis explaining how Panopto is used to support the MSc Allergy course. The Panopto app allows students to re-watch their lectures, with the slides accompanied by an

The focus of the latest SGH iPAD coffee club was looking at how social media can be used in teaching and research, with some inspiring examples from within the faculty. Catherine Hennessy explained how students on the NLM2 module had

It was great to have a record seventeen attendees along to the latest iPAD coffee club at SGH, with a range of devices. We talked about how new users might set up their devices to support them at work: Setting