Consult | Collaborate | Create
Ready (Player One) The novel by Ernest Cline (and now a major 2018 feature film) sets out a future where most of humanity uses virtual reality software “to escape the desolation of the real world”. Sounds grim? Smartphones and tablets have become deeply
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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
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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,
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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
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2018 has seen another substantial haul of nominations for our Blackboard & VLE Awards, with students sharing the numerous ways course sites have supported and inspired their learning. It’s evident that many courses do this well, and after careful consideration
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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
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Nominations are open for our sixth annual Blackboard & VLE Awards. Students have the opportunity to feed back on what they’ve found particularly helpful to their learning, and invite recognition of the staff who are supporting them in this way. A ‘virtual
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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
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Earlier this month the Digital Learning team hosted the first workshop for the Hololens early adopter group. If you haven’t heard of Microsoft’s mixed reality headset, which enables users to interact with virtual holograms and real objects in the physical world, you
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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
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Problems in education are rarely unique: my solution or experience might help you. That’s at the heart of ALT-C, the annual conference of the Association of Learning Technologists. A key theme of this year’s conference was “moving from the practical
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This week saw the launch of MEIN – Medical Education Innovation Network, with a half-day conference at the Institute for Development Sciences at University Hospital Southampton. The conference brought together health professionals, educators and students to discuss the future of medical
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by Daryl Peel The Playful Learning Conference in Manchester is run on an annual basis and for Learning Designers who focus on playful learning design it’s the highlight of the year. Three days of fun activities, inspiring keynotes, networking
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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
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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
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(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
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Now into its fifth year, the 2017 Blackboard & VLE Awards competition has seen an increasing number of courses supported by exemplary use and design of their virtual learning environment. This year’s awards event featured a mix of familiar and new faces:
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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
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Students have contributed a record number of nominations for this year’s Blackboard & VLE Awards, sharing valuable feedback about what is most useful in a course site. It is evident that many courses offer students a fantastic online learning experience alongside the
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The fourth annual ILIaD Blackboard & VLE Awards event brought together colleagues from across the university who have inspired their students by the quality of their VLE provision. With a record number of courses nominated, the judging panel had the
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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