Dr Kurinchi Gurusamy wins award for Innovation & Excellence in Education

Hypervideos or hyperlinked videos are special video files in which links to other videos are embedded, enabling navigation as required by the student.

Dr Kurinchi Gurusamy, Lecturer in Surgery, has been funded by the SLMS Innovation and Excellence in Education Grant Scheme to create such hypervideos, for their use in teaching Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses, as well as the MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare, for which he is the Course Tutor.

Just as an index in a book allows the reader to locate and read a topic without reading the book in its entirety, the hypervideo allows the viewer to locate and view the section that is of most importance to them without having to view the entire video. It is also possible to link new or difficult terms to other videos or webpages, which plays the role of a 'glossary of terms'.

The videos can be personalised by providing different content for people with different levels of understanding and knowledge; for example, one video can be linked to the correct answer and another, to the wrong one.

Students are able to revisit areas which they find challenging, quickly and with ease, thus learning at their own pace. This is the first time that hypervideos have been used for teaching in Biomedicine and is just one of the tools being utilised by the Division, as it positions itself as a trailblazer in the delivery of alternative teaching methods.