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| Co-producing transformative knowledge and action through spatially and socially embedded learning | This presentation examines the mode of knowledge co-production developed through the practice module of the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD MSc) at the Development Planning Unit. In doing so, the paper seeks to contribute to current debates on transdisciplinary knowledge production and learning and draw out some lessons about the learning environment and strategies that can enable and activate a co-produced process between students, academics, and local community groups. The ESD MSc practice module is based on two action-learning platforms - ‘Water Justice in Latin American Cities’ and ‘the Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change’ (both of which were initiated by the DPU). These platforms seek to articulate the tacit and codified knowledge produced by local partners overseas. Hence the module is designed to bring together different communities of practice – namely international postgraduate students from diverse backgrounds and experiences together with academics, local partners and community members - to undertake research that transcends the academic confines, and produces transformative knowledge and action through socially and spatially embedded learning. Through this presentation, we examine the process by which different types of knowledge users and producers come together in new ways that expand the possibilities for learning, action and further research and defy the conventional boundaries between teaching and learning, knowing and experiencing and understanding and acting. This presentation examines the mode of knowledge co-production developed through the practice module of the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD MSc) at the Development Planning Unit. In doing so, the paper seeks to contribute to current debates on transdisciplinary knowledge production and learning and draw out some lessons about the learning environment and strategies that can enable and activate a co-produced process between students, academics, and local community groups. The ESD MSc practice module is based on two action-learning platforms - ‘Water Justice in Latin American Cities’ and ‘the Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change’ (both of which were initiated by the DPU). These platforms seek to articulate the tacit and codified knowledge produced by local partners overseas. Hence the module is designed to bring together different communities of practice – namely international postgraduate students from diverse backgrounds and experiences together with academics, local partners and community members - to undertake research that transcends the academic confines, and produces transformative knowledge and action through socially and spatially embedded learning. Through this presentation, we examine the process by which different types of knowledge users and producers come together in new ways that expand the possibilities for learning, action and further research and defy the conventional boundaries between teaching and learning, knowing and experiencing and understanding and acting. | Adriana Allen | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| CMALT Project | We will report on the UCL CMALT pilot project, which supported a cohort of 20 teaching administrators to undertake accreditation as Certified Members of the Association for Learning Technology. Improvement of digital literacy skills, increased collaboration and recognition had an impact on the student experience as well as career prospects. Teaching Administrators are a staff group that is often overlooked but which can be crucial in supporting and enabling change across institutions, with a direct impact on the student experience. The CMALT accreditation framework lends itself to a cohort based approach which can help this staff group to develop and share skills and good practice. The accreditation process at UCL can be easily adapted for use with other staff groups, e.g. academic staff and teaching assistants. | Stefanie Anyadi | Poster Presentation |
| SysMIC Live Training of Interdisciplinary Skills via the Internet | SysMIC (www.sysmic.ac.uk) is an online course in interdisciplinary skills for Bioscience researchers with national reach and international ambitions with currently around 400 active trainees. Previously, this course for PhD students, post-docs and PIs only used web-based content within the Moodle VLE.To enhance the trainee experience of web-based learning we are now able to offer live training sessions of materials where presenters, tutors and trainees are connected via a high-quality and easy-to-control audio-visual live-stream – a major step forward in UCL’s pedagogy and “chalk-face” adoption of cutting-edge learning technologies. Citrix’s GoToTraining was chosen for this purpose as the most flexible software with 24/7 professional support. It allows high-resolution audio-visual live interactions for up to 200 participants. This is currently the best emulation of an interactive face-to-face training situation over the internet. Importantly GoToTraining allows the embedding of video content and is also configured for touch screen devices like smart phones and tablets. Integrating GoToTraining with the SysMIC environment provides a marked upgrade in thBaier_Gerolde professional feel of nationally recognised eLearning courses spearheaded by UCL. It facilitates recruitment of leading experts from all over the world to participate in sessions and interact with trainees. The presentation offers a unique opportunity to get to know these novel live training facilities at UCL. We will set up a short demo session for conference participants to witness its interactive features and discuss feedback from SysMIC trainees about their views on life training opportunities. DOH Michael J. July 2008 “Healthcare for All” Report of the Independent Inquiry into access to healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities HMSO July 2008. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130107105354/http:/www.dh.go... | Gerold Baier | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Data Retrieval Tests and Task Book Training: An alternative route to Laboratory Assessment | The assessment of work carried out in physics laboratories in the UK is typically achieved through the retrospective assessment of Laboratory Notebooks. These notebooks record the students’ work undertaken in the physics laboratory, the analysis of their results and the conclusions they draw. In addition, by using notebooks, students follow procedures for the conduct and recording of experiments that conform to academic and industrial best practices. The marking of Laboratory Notebooks is labour intensive, outside the laboratory, for academic staff and can result in students receiving delayed formative feedback. A new system, based on continuous face-to-face feedback using Task Books plus Data Retrieval Tests has been used this year. Task Books are a scaffolding formative-feedback structure that enables demonstrators to guide students using Socratic methods in a one-to-one context (group Socratic interactions being implemented in other aspects of the laboratory process). Students are given tasks to complete in each laboratory session and they must demonstrate that they have achieved them to Demonstrators. Data Retrieval Tests are a means to assess whether students have created laboratory records that can be used to retrospectively answer questions on their recorded work. This helps to reinforce the need to be able to utilise these documents of record after the experimental work is ended. This is an important feature of a physicist’s on-going experimental activity when ‘in the field’. This talk will discuss how these methods were designed and implemented. In addition, the consequences of using such a new method of laboratory teaching will be presented. | Paul Bartlett | Presentation |
| The novel approach to the challenge of online clinical assessments in distance learning | Background The UCL Diploma in Clinical Neurology via Distance Learning is a world first, offering comprehensive online learning and assessments. Established in 2012, this course currently has over 30 students across the globe. The course The online learning course comprises 400 topics divided into 4 basic modules and 4 advanced modules, with lectures covering different aspects of neurology. The content of these lectures has been peer reviewed by experts in the respective fields from throughout Europe. We keep in regular touch with the students via video conferencing. This covers academic tutoring, clinical guidance pastoral care and other support. Our approach The online assessments are currently multiple choice questions (MCQs). We plan to supplement these by testing clinical skills and competence via interactive case presentations. Challenges We are exploring a novel approach to the assessment of clinical skills. This requires experimentation with more sophisticated technologies including interactive assessments, 3D simulation, and animated assessments including avatars and interactive videos which have been used in other contexts such as gaming. We will present our experience with these online assessments during the conference. Conclusion The UCL Diploma in Clinical Neurology via Distance Learning is a unique, well established, comprehensive course. Research into newer interfaces for online assessments will be needed to fully optimize e-learning as a mode of delivery for learning. As with all new innovation we will need to assess the benefits and acceptability. We will do this via student feedback. | Amit Batla | Poster Presentation |
| Running a fully distance learning course at UCL: what have we learned? | Background Building on our portfolio of taught postgraduate programmes, we developed the UCL Diploma in Clinical Neurology via Distance Learning in 2012. We currently have over 30 students, across the globe, enrolled on the course. At the start of the academic year 2014, we paused to reflect on our experience and the lessons we have learned. Opportunities and challenges The fully distance learning programme offers the opportunity to recruit students who would otherwise not be able to engage with study at UCL. We have encountered a number of challenges relating to: course design and delivery; pedagogy, technology, administration, management and finance. As a team (Institute of Neurology Education Unit) this has been the catalyst for us to: (i) acquire new skills (ii) recruit additional staff with additional skills (technical, pedagogical); (iii) forge new and/or different working relationships with existing colleagues within the local and wider UCL community e.g. those who have expertise in distance learning technology, administration, marketing, advertising, finance and with the various UCL Pro-Provosts; (iv) forge relationships with other people around the globe. Reflection We will present a summary of the key lessons we have learned in setting up and running a fully distance learning course. We believe this experience will be of interest to colleagues who are planning to set up distance (and/or blended) learning courses elsewhere within UCL, whatever the academic discipline. | David Blundred | Presentation |
| Making Physics more interactive | I will describe how I have used iPython to make physics teaching more interactive for students. I will describe an interactive web-server developed with ISD which allowed me to convert my lecture notes for a first year waves course to iPython notebooks. This makes the lecture notes, and in particular all figures dynamic. I will also discuss how I plan to use the same server to allow third year quantum mechanics students to study complex problems drawn from my research. | David Bowler | Presentation |
| Enabling students to learn and work together in an interprofessional clinical placement | Effective interdisciplinary working and an excellent knowledge of professional’s roles are key to providing the highest standard of patient centred care. There is growing evidence to suggest that introducing the inter-professional approach at pre-registration level results in positive learning outcomes in terms of attitudes, knowledge, collaborative skills and effective teamworking. This presentation describes an inter-professional placement that included students from three AHP disciplines in three London HEIs: Speech and Language Therapy (UCL), Occupational Therapy (London South Bank University) and Physiotherapy (Kings College London). The students attended a 10 day block placement at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery RRU. They worked together at all times on a range of clinical and workplace activities, including joint assessment, goal-setting and intervention with patients. They also attended IDT meetings and collaborated in note and report-writing. Pre and post questionnaires and interviews evaluated students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes to interdisciplinary teamworking. Results indicated that all students had benefited, demonstrating Improved skills in joint problem-solving and negotiation, increased confidence in their and others’ roles and better understanding of a client-centred approach. Students also commented positively on the opportunity for working with and learning from peers, which facilitated their learning and professional development. The findings suggest that this placement model can be a very positive learning experience for health professional students, as well as improving the patient experience. | Stefanie Bucher | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| Trying to hit a moving target: Teaching emerging practice in digital curation | In this presentation, I will trace the way in which the design and implementation of a new module in digital curation has led me to reconceptualise my idea of teaching. I will outline how I am using ideas from complexity science in education and connectivism to make sense of what I am doing when trying to prepare students to work in a rapidly changing and uncertain area. I will also discuss how these ideas are translating into the use of different tools and techniques both within and outside the classroom. | Jenny Bunn | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Assessing practical skills | All Life Science degrees have a large component of practical laboratory-based teaching where we aim to introduce students to the research skills and techniques they will need during their career. Assessment of this forms an important part of their undergraduate studies. Our first year practicals have traditionally been assessed by reports which require analysis of data and given answers to key related questions. In the past few years marks for this kind of report have been high and rising (last year the class average was 75.7%). Class sizes and a concern that internet searching and group work was replacing understanding caused us to re-evaluate our methods. This year we retained the lab sheets which give students practice at evaluation of results and rapid feedback but replaced the post-practical reports with a moodle-based test. This contained similar questions to those seen during the practical or present on the old style reports but was carried out in a timed and moderated environment. The average mark from this assessment dropped to 51%. We believe that this shows that our original assessments were not enabling the students to truly assimilate a deep understanding of the practical techniques and analysis. Learning from laboratory practicals is essential and by challenging students with this test we believe we are encouraging them to develop the necessary research skills and applications that they will need to successfully complete their degree. | Amanda Cain | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| Research-led Group Projects in Computer Science | In order to deepen students' appreciation of what computer research is and how it is carried out, we have developed two complementary modules, targeted at 3rd year UG students (on a 4-year programme): a Research Methods module (term 1), followed by a Research Group Project module (term 2). Taken together, students experience the whole scientific research process: learning to read literature critically, evaluating research ideas, formulating hypothesis, designing and executing experiments to validate them, analysing and interpreting results, and finally communicate findings (both verbally and in writing). In practice, students were divided in groups of 4/5, with each group assigned to a different academic mentor. The method of instruction was tutorials: students would meet weekly with their mentor, who guided and supervised the whole process. Both modules were 100% assessed by coursework, which consisted of a literature review (for the Research Methods part), and a research paper (for the Research Group Project part). A final event was also organised, where students presented their work to an audience of both academic and industrial researchers, following a mini-conference style format. | Licia Capra | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Open-access publications for research and learning: the case of Jeremy Bentham and the escaped convict | The vast Bentham Papers collection, held by UCL Library Special Collections, is a resource of international historical and philosophical importance for researchers and students alike. However, we are still discovering precisely what the collection contains, and our view of Bentham and his thought is constantly developing. For instance, recent research at UCL has determined that Bentham was an early proponent of sexual liberty. UCL’s Bentham Project is exploring the contents of the manuscripts and producing the new edition of Bentham’s Collected Works, as well as co-ordinating the award-winning crowdsourced transcription project, Transcribe Bentham. One of the more incongruous items within the Bentham collection is the Memorandoms of James Martin, a convict transported to New South Wales in 1788. It is the only extant first-hand account of perhaps the most famous escape from Australia by transported convicts: on the night of 28 March 1791, Martin, in company with seven male prisoners, and one female convict and her two children, stole the governor’s six-oared cutter. In it, they sailed up the eastern and northern coasts of Australia, and eventually reached Kupang in Timor on 5 June. There they successfully (for a while) posed as shipwreck survivors, and enjoyed the hospitality of their Dutch hosts. It was an incredible feat of endurance and seamanship in surviving a two-month journey of over 5,000 kilometres in an open boat. In conjunction with UCL’s Outreach Librarian, Dr Tabith Tuckett, I discussed this remarkable document with a group of history students on Professor Margot Finn’s Australian history course. Their enthusiasm inspired me to create a critical, annotated edition of the Memorandoms, which has now been published as an open-access resource for anyone to read and use. This paper will discuss how the Memorandoms has been presented online, and how we at the Bentham Project are bringing our research into the digital age. | Tim Causer | Presentation |
| Object-based learning as a vehicle for Research-based learning | Museum objects can be used to acquire subject specific as well as cross disciplinary knowledge, and gain transferable skills in research, communication and observation. Known as object-based learning (OBL), this is an active, experiential, learning pedagogy which puts students at the centre of the learning process. In this workshop participants will gain hands-on experience of the value of OBL to research-based learning, through a series of practical sessions using objects from across UCL Museums. Inspired by existing OBL lessons taken from a range of undergraduate modules, participants will work through the experiential learning cycle by participating in object-based sessions which encourage the development of research skills. Examples of OBL which encourages research-based learning include: [1] A Mystery Specimen exercise which forms part of the module entitled ‘Vertebrate Life and Evolution’ where students have to identify a mystery part of an animal (e.g. a bit of bone, tooth or skin) from the Grant Museum of Zoology as closely as possible to species level and write the identification up in the style of a scientific journal article; [2] Slade students embark on a research process that leads them to produce an original work of art in response to collections from the UCL Art Museum; [3] Making History is a new undergraduate module which encourages creative, lateral thinking about the past, active engagement with the rich historical resources afforded by UCL's London environment, and reflective collaborative learning by critically appraising aspects of the material culture being researched. | Helen Chatterjee | Object Based Learning Sessions in The Art Museum (Print Room) |
| Increasing student engagement using audience response systems | This project studies the effectiveness of web- or text-based audience response systems (ARS) in increasing student engagement. Since web-based ARS allow more flexibility than traditional clickers, I tested the effectiveness of different ARS activities. One such activity was a free-response questionnaire on assigned journal articles or research presentations before the lecture. The purpose of this ARS activity was to move away from a passive interaction with the materials, and encourage a more active engagement. I used student responses to structure the lecture, thereby encouraging students to take ownership of their learning experience. I also used the ARS to introduce team quizzes during the lecture. These included multiple choice questions on material new to the students or material that was more involved than the examples discussed in the lecture. Students were asked to confer with team members before answering. Since students had to register to participate in the ARS activities, I was able to collect data on their participation patterns as well as demographic and other individual characteristics. In the paper, I compare and contrast student participation across the ARS activities by demographic and other characteristics. I also present student evaluations of their experiences, as well as data on student participation in other class activities such as assigned problem sets and compare this with the previous year when there were no ARS activities. Finally, I describe the experience of introducing these methods and the lessons learnt. | Parama Chaudhury | Presentation |
| Using e-moving narratives to enhance visual literacy | In urban planning programmes, the design dimension has gained strong recognition as critical for the understanding of urban change. But first year undergraduates often have no prior design knowledge or skills and find it hard to negotiate this new academic (design) language. This difficulty in translating conceptual ideas into graphic and visual images often inhibits the student’s engagement within the class and even interferes with their understanding of feedback. This poster aims to graphically illustate interim reflections of an ongoing staff-student project aiming to develop and enhance the visual literacy of Urban Planning undergraduates by aid of e-resources created for and available at their virtual learning environment. Building on e-resources that provide a comprehensive still images library of six spatial categories identified by the students (experiential & behavioural qualities, hard vs soft materials, leftover space, street furniture, townscape, urban fabric), this project aims to enhance the understanding of the experiential & behavioural qualities category further. Identified as ‘challenging and contentious and more open to subjective interpretation’, the ongoing project explores this category by going beyond the stillness of photography to provide moving images and sound that illustrate monthly variations in sites used as case studies in the Urban Design class. This discursive moving narrative delivers a referential of the different uses by different users within the same setting, but most of all aims to illustrate the influence that intangible elements such as weather changes, sound and smell have on the sensory perception and consequent use of those spaces. | Elisabete Cidre | Poster |
| Decolonising my discipline by teaching research on race | Why don't students racialised-as-black do philosophy? At least two models attempt to account for this phenomenon. According to the model of racial deficit, students racialised-as-black lack sufficient aspiration to do philosophy. By contrast, according to the model of racial domination, students racialised-as-black have good reason to reject the discipline of philosophy, because that discipline consists in knowledge that was produced by colonialism. Here, then, is a distinctive way in which we can understand what Andrew Pilkington (2011) has called 'Institutional Racism in the Academy': as colonialism. Indeed, Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton (1967), when they coined the term, defined it in this very way: 'institutional racism has another name: colonialism'. The contention of the model of racial domination is that, to paraphrase Carmichael and Hamilton, it forces students racialised-as-black to 'stand as colonial subjects in relation to the white' teachers. Why would anyone choose to stand in such a relation? I shall identify a number of ways in which the discipline of philosophy as it is currently taught consists in colonised knowledge. I shall share a number of ways in which I have attempted to decolonise that knowledge, in my recent seminar, PHIL3061: The philosophy of anti-slavery. I shall conclude by arguing that, if teachers of philosophy follow my lead, then students racialised-as-black will have greater reason to do philosophy. | Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman | Follow this Link to text from Presentation Slides |
| Teachers’ initial experiences of the Exploring Existing Knowledge (EEK) project | Within the School of Medical and Life Sciences (SLMS), the innovation grant-funded ‘Exploring Existing Knowledge’ (EEK) project supported the development of a number of online diagnostic tests. These Moodle-based quizzes aimed to help new Masters students identify and address gaps in their knowledge prior to, or at the very start of, their course. Several academics involved in the project agreed to participate in interviews to help evaluate their experiences of this approach. The project revealed the many challenges that new Masters students may have at enrolment, due to their diverse educational backgrounds. These include abilities in English for academic purposes and essential study skills such as academic writing, note-taking, self-management and critical thinking skills. Academic participants considered that diagnostic quizzes and open Moodle courses with instructional videos and discussion forums could greatly help students diagnose and address skills deficiencies at an early stage in their studies. However, such resources require significant development input and UCL might reconsider the balance of centrally coordinated versus discipline-specific learning development opportunities. The outcomes of the EEK project evaluation will be presented as a poster as a basis for broader discussion within a future UCL ARENA workshop, where participants will be encouraged to consider the learning needs of their own students and strategies to help prepare them for university, especially at postgraduate level. | Vicki Dale | Poster Presentation |
| Developing our postgraduate researchers as teachers – evaluation of a PGTA training scheme | This session will present the findings of an evaluation of a schools-facing postgraduate training scheme delivered by CALT. Postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs) within the School of Laws, Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences (SLASH) are required to attend an ‘Introduction to Higher Education’ workshop, and are given the opportunity to participate in an extended training programme, which enables them to obtain Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 14 PGTAs, representative of a range of disciplines and purposively selected to compare the experiences of individuals who fully, partly, or did not participate in the extended training scheme. The study revealed that ‘high agency’ individuals – who were motivated and felt able to facilitate student-led learning approaches – were able to put what they had learned into practice, and that this gave them confidence to try new approaches, boosted their identity as a teacher, and positively influenced student learning. In contrast, ‘low agency’ individuals felt constrained in terms of what changes they were allowed to implement in relation to teaching and assessment and they saw their role as mainly providing support to academics. Although participants recognised the value of generic teacher training, there was a sense that more discipline-specific training would be beneficial. This suggests a need for greater collaboration between CALT and individual departments to provide effective, targeted support for postgraduate teacher-researchers regarding their professional development. This may be achieved through the new ARENA scheme (Advancing Research-based Education in Academia). | Vicki Dale | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Adapting Research Based Learning to the Current University Environment. | In 1993 Gerald Edleman the Nobel prize winning immunologist, devised an innovative scientific meeting, entitled the ‘Neurobiology of Neurodegenerative Disease’ (NND). The NND ran only once, at Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical College, and focused on a research based approach to the understanding of human neurodegenerative diseases. Having attended this course, I introduced the NND as a research based specialist third year module to the undergraduate syllabus at UCL. The NND has been modified and expanded since its first introduction, which attracted 12 students, and currently attracts 126. This course details the clinical symptoms, genetics, and molecular pathology of a variety of human NND and then explores how contemporary research, in a variety of experimental systems, is furthering our understanding of these conditions. Students undertake an individual study of a selected research inspired approach to NDD formulated in a 6000 word dissertation. The recent expansion in both the number, and diversity of students within UCL has challenged the traditional basis of this approach to teaching. I wish to discuss and stimulate discussion of ways to address both the diversity of the knowledge base of students entering this module (students currently come from 4 faculties and are registered for 31 differing degree programmes) and secondly to devise innovative methods of assessment for large numbers of students undertaking final year modules. These challenges are shared by several other modules within the biosciences, but must be addressed if we are to continue with, and further develop, our research based teaching philosophy. | Stephen W Davies | Presentation |
| Letting First Year Students Design and Run Their Own Biochemistry Practical | Experimental techniques and theory are a key component of study for Biochemistry students. A novel practical has been introduced at the end of the first year allowing them to implement and demonstrate the understanding they have gained, by designing their own experiment. The aim of the 3-day long experiment, to purify a protein, relies on an understanding of the most fundamental aspects of biochemistry, and provides them with a unique opportunity to test their knowledge as well as develop their problem-solving and analytical skills. This experiment contrasts with their previous laboratory experiences in the following ways: • Students are able to design their own protocol o A choice of three different purification techniques o Each technique has a number of parameters that must be decided upon o Quantification strategies are needed to demonstrate purification progress • Students prepare their own reagents • Experiment is followed by an oral presentation of experimental strategy and results Crucially, there is enough latitude for students to get things wrong, giving students ownership of a successful purification, and motivating them to apply creative analysis and problem-solving to their strategy. Student feedback on this experience was hugely positive, highlighting their appreciation of the opportunity to plan a genuine experiment, as well as how successful teamwork, delegation and planning had been crucial for their efforts. Providing such a research-like opportunity gave first year students a unique chance to challenge and demonstrate their abilities, and proved to be a highly memorable learning experience. | Charmian Dawson | Presentation |
| Improving individual learning through personal interaction - an experiment in tutorial-based teaching and peer assessment | This presentation reports on an experiment in the Department of Information Studies to investigate the effects, particularly in terms of student satisfaction, of a change from a "traditional” lecture-plus-exercises format assessed by essay and exam, to a tutorial-based system with substantial peer assessment. The module “Fundamentals of Information Science” was reorganised from 10 3-hour lecture+exercise blocks into one 3-hour introductory whole group session, 8 1-hour small group (5 student) tutorials, and one 3 hour whole group revision session. Assessment was 50% peer assessment (conducted weekly in tutorials) plus 50% final exam. The initial session focused on preparing the students for what to expect, getting them to create and agree criteria for peer assessment, and trying a practice run. The tutorials achieved 100% attendance: specific resources would be provided weekly (video lectures, specified readings, slide sets, practical exercises etc.) which the students were required to read/watch/complete individually before meeting. Students also had a traditional reading list and were encouraged to supplement their preparation from other resources of their own choosing. The peer assessment system, a 1-5 score of each participant by every other in the group each week, proved simple to administer and appeared generally to be very honestly and appropriately applied. Groups were reassigned midway to expose students to more viewpoints. An extensive questionnaire was sent to all students to investigate their reactions to the changes to the module. This data is being analysed at time of writing and the results will be presented in the final paper. | Andy Dawson | Presentation |
| Learning through teaching: A pilot study on student-generated e-learning videos | Student-generated content has strong potential to stimulate active learning. For students, generating content may be beneficial in terms of learning about the course material, improving their digital literacy, and creating shared learning resources for their peers. In this pilot study, a framework for integrating student-generated videos into an undergraduate/masters-level course was developed. Students worked alone or in pairs to create videos less than six minutes in duration that answered questions provided by the course lecturer. Videos that students chose to make available to their peers were distributed online. Preliminary indications of the pedagogical value of the framework and its limitations were obtained with an anonymous survey. | Adrien Desjardins / Jessica Gramp | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| From CPD courses to advanced final year research-based undergraduate modules | Over the last three years we have run 3-day long CPD course on Laboratory Techniques in Mammalian Cell Biology. The students on the course have a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a superbly equipped laboratory setting. The students on the course range from UCl undergraduates to post-doctoral researchers, technical staff and secondary school teachers. During the three days, the 20 participants work closely with tutors and demonstrators and they are able to gain valuable technical skills in focused laboratory sessions interspersed with the tutorials on current topics in mammalian cell and stem cells biology. We were able to gather useful feedback from the students regarding their expectations of the course, the content and delivery. The information was used to make adjustments to the course structure and its marketing strategy. Learning from this experience, we propose that a similar structure could be embedded in our final year modules. Currently, our students have minimal laboratory exposure until they reach their final year when they engage in research projects. However, it is difficult to normalize the quality of training and the level of the independent skills that the students acquire in individual staff laboratories. Having a module with several intense laboratory sessions, including advanced techniques, would greatly increase portfolio of our students’ technical skills and their employability prospects. We will present a proposed organisation of such a module, considering the benefits of research-based learning, learning outcomes and financial structure. | Snezana Djordjevic | Presentaton |
| Closing the feedback loop: how do physics undergraduates use feedback comments on their laboratory coursework? | The pressures of rising student numbers and diminishing academic resources limit the amount of feedback university teachers can provide. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to evaluate the effectiveness of feedback, but this is not easy. How do we find out whether students are using our feedback and how to make it more useful to them? During 2012-2013 the laboratory notebooks of physics undergraduates taking two second year practical courses were audited to discover whether they had used feedback comments in their subsequent coursework. 95% of the 37 students on the first course and 100% of the 14 students on the second course whose work was audited had used feedback. Using the Mastery/Developmental classification developed by Petty (2004), the marker’s comments were classified into two groups based on whether they addressed simple (mastery) or complex (developmental) learning outcomes. Mastery comments were more likely to be acted on than developmental comments which aimed to extend students’ skills and understanding to higher levels. Following reflection on the first course, students taking the second course were given responsibility for checking their peers’ notebooks against pre-set criteria. This improved students’ marks but did not eliminate the need for mastery feedback. The results of the audit have now been used to develop new assessment criteria for 2013-2014. In the new scheme, students are responsible for mastery objectives while teachers give feedback on developmental objectives. Preliminary results from the revised scheme will be presented and the implications for further feedback improvements discussed. | Pam Donovan | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| Developing creative practice through multi-media learning: Linking theory and research | This project aimed to stimulate doctoral educational psychology students to apply theory and research into children’s learning and principles of multi-media learning to develop and adapt resources to support delivery of therapeutic interventions with children and young people. This builds on previous work into how a combination of face-to-face and online learning (known as ‘blended’ learning) can be used to enhance student experience in the development of professional competence. A resource bank, designed to enable students to access to materials downloadable from the web, was built. In addition, new workshops were scheduled with a focus on filming and editing video, use of animations, therapeutic stories and digital storytelling. An initial pilot group of 12 students have been supported, both conceptually and practically in building and adapting interactive resources, relevant to the young people with whom they are working, to enhance motivation and engagement. An illustrative case study will be used to demonstrate the process. The implications for assessment will be explored through discussion of new criteria that have been added to assessment protocols. In addition, elements of the project evaluation will be presented which include the following indicators of success: 1. Improvement in quality of resources produced to support CBT interventions (evaluated by course tutors with reference to assessment criteria within submitted assignments). 2. Post-course assessment showing improved tailoring of interventions by students and increased confidence in doing so (evaluated by course tutors and student self-report). | Sandra Dunsmuir | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Nanofabrication at the LCN: Learning-by-making at the nano-scale | For science and engineering students, one of the most formative experiences is building something, and in doing so understand not just how it works but why it works. What more profound experiences can there be, but for an electrical engineer to make a transistor a hundred atoms wide, a biochemist to create an artificial nose that detects specific chemicals, or a physicist to build a device which proves that electrons can exist in two places at once? The London Centre for Nanotechnology cleanroom represents a unique opportunity to enhance the training we can offer our undergraduates by allowing them to have precisely such experiences. In addition to enabling them to connect to their subject at a deeper level, such students would also emerge with unique skills making them even more attractive to employers or the very best post-graduate degree programs. The LCN already plays an important role in research-based learning at UCL by hosting undergraduate project students. However, it does not currently possess the resources to permit cleanroom work as part of these projects. The result inevitably places limits on the scope and ambition of the student projects, makes students reliant on materials previously fabricated by other researchers and cuts the students out of a key part of the research process. We therefore propose to open the doors of the LCN cleanroom to undergraduates for the first time. This will enable us to leverage what is an already invaluable research asset to provide a unique undergraduate learning experience. | Jeroen Elzerman | Withdrawn from Presentation |
| Developing Communication Skills in Postgraduate Research Students | The ability to communicate a message to specialist and lay audiences is a key development skill for students. High levels of verbal and written communication are important attributes for our graduates in relation to employability and further research. This presentation will focus on verbal communication skills in post-upgrade PhD students. Background The Faculty of Brain Sciences organised its first Postgraduate Poster Symposium in 2012-13. Over 60 students participated from across the Faculty. The event offered a networking opportunity for students in a Faculty that is spread over a large geographic area. Some informal peer evaluation of their work and prizes were awarded. Posters reflected high levels of written and visual communication. However, the judges commented that a significant number of students showed weaker verbal communication skills when explaining their research. For 2013-14 we have adapted the Symposium to include an assessment of the students’ verbal communication skills. Students delivered a brief talk (2 mins) without visual aids to judges and their peers, and were asked the following questions: What is your research question? Why is it important? What have you found so far? Marks from the presentation were added to poster marks to give overall scores. Guidance was given to students in advance and student feedback was collected, as well other data e.g. year of study, institute/division, Home/EEU/International status. A summary of the feedback data will be presented which may be of interest to others wishing to assess and develop communication skills in PhD students elsewhere at UCL. | Julie Evans | Poster |
| Improving assessment literacy skills in undergraduate Psychology students using an Honours and GPA grading system | Background Psychology students rate their overall satisfaction with their degree programme very highly (92% NSS 2013), but assessment and feedback is one area where their satisfaction is lower, reflective of the whole of UCL. Students’ negative comments in relation to assessment and feedback focus on not knowing how to achieve good grades due partly to a lack of understanding of the marking criteria descriptors. Additionally, many marking criteria descriptors are too generic, essay based and not adapted to specific forms of research based assessment e.g. research projects and experimental reports. The move to a GPA system of grading may cause more confusion unless students (and staff) develop a clear understanding of the marking criteria and descriptors. The Project Our aim is to work with staff and students in Psychology to make current marking criteria more explicit and to develop specific marking criteria and descriptors for different forms of assessment with respect to the Honours system, and additionally, to develop explicit marking descriptors in relation to the new GPA system. The efficacy of these descriptors will then be tested by both staff and students, using both systems by applying them to examples of coursework in the above categories. The methodology we will employ will be focus groups and we will collect quantitative and qualitative data. We will present preliminary data on this project which has applicability to all undergraduate programmes offered at UCL. This project has been funded by a SLMS Excellence in Teaching and Learning Innovation grant. | Alastair McClelland | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| Enhancing research-based communication skills in undergraduate students | The Faculty of Brain Sciences currently has 537 undergraduate students, around a third of whom are final year students. Although practices vary across the Faculty in relation to opportunities for students to develop their communication skills in relation to research, there was little or no opportunity for students to participate in and attend a conference of their peers. Conference attendance and participation develop key skills of analysis, evaluation, critical appraisal, self-reflection and visual, written and verbal communication in students, which are valuable core academic and transferable skills in relation to employability. Student conferences also provide a venue for friendly and supportive peer review of undergraduate research which is less intimidating than formative assessment and develops skills of professionalism. Student conferences also provide a different kind of learning opportunity for students which is not common at UCL. Finally, presenting at a conference can enhance a student’s CV, especially when entry is competitive and selective. The presentation will outline the rationale behind developing the Brain Science Undergraduate one day conference in March 2013. The emphasis was on attempting to give students a ‘real-world’ experience of an academic conference: a call for word-limited abstracts went out in January, papers were selected on a competitive basis by a panel of programme directors, students were given generic advice about their presentations and parallel sessions were chaired by academic tutors. Feedback forms were given to both presenters and attendees to assess their different experiences, and the responses will be discussed in detail in the presentation. | Julie Evans | Presentation |
| Formation of a Tripartite Part-Time PhD Study Group | An inaugural one-day seminar for part-time PhD students held in June 2013 involved over 45 delegates from a variety of disciplines studying at four academic institutions. The Graduate School of University College London (UCL) hosted the event in conjunction with Brunel University, University of East London and the Institute of Education. The focus of the seminar was on: time management, project management and effective academic writing. The seminar included presentations by senior lecturers from the four institutions and interactive workshops, allowing the students to exchange thoughts and views. The sense of common purpose and endeavour that the seminar generated among those attending provided the catalyst for the formation of a part-time PhD study group involving students from many disciplines, to exchange ideas and discuss common challenges. Initially, the study group attracted 6 participants expanding to 14 over the following months who are utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods for their research. The first three meetings were held monthly (July, August, September 2013) changing to bi-monthly (November 2013) reflecting the busy schedules that part-time researchers have to deal with. Topics covered so far include literature reviews; networking; academic writing; ideal qualities of supervisors and accessing research tutorials. Topics for a future meeting are discussed by those attending at the end of the previous meeting and are agreed in a collegiate manner. Sufficient time is allocated for discussion about individual challenges. The poster will depict the background, activities, impact, conclusions and next steps of this tripartite part-time PhD study group. | Peter Fine | Poster Presentation |
| Students as Researchers: a case study of Arts and Sciences BASc first year Core methods modules | Through the presentation we will briefly discuss how to design a course and assessments which encourage students to do their own research from the earliest stages of their undergraduate studies. We present a 10-minute joint talk, based on the two Year 1 Arts and Sciences Core methods courses: Quantitative Methods, Interdisciplinary Research Methods. In the talk we present the content and methods that students are asked to learn, and exhibit how they are asked to apply what they have learnt. We provide examples of student successes and examples of challenges to lecturers from each course. In particular, we will briefly address: 1. How to design assessments that are open enough to be engaging and personal, yet coherent enough to be assessed 2. Managing student expectations about what a ‘taught module’ should be 3. Considerations for supervision of RBE | Carl Gombrich | Presentation |
| Exploring Students’ Perception and Experience of an Online Learning Course in Economic Evaluation | Abstract This study explored the perceptions and experiences of a group of students enrolled in an online course in Economic Evaluation. In particular, this study aimed to; 1) explore student perceptions of online learning before their exposure to the course, 2) understand the student experience of learning Economic Evaluation online, and 3) consider how the design of an online learning experience can overcome negative perceptions and meet or exceed positive expectations. To meet the objectives, a mixed methods approach to the collection of data was adopted, using both focus group discussions and an online survey. Thematic analysis was then used to synthesize the data collected and highlight key findings. The participants identified several positive and negative perceived attributes of online learning, many of which are well documented in the literature. In addition, after exposure to the course, participants reported several factors that affected their learning experience on this course, some of which have not yet been reported in the wider literature. The five main factors affecting learning on this course include; 1) Pace of learning in an online environment, 2) Learning style preference, 3) Immediacy of feedback, 4) Method of content delivery, and 5) Issues around navigating content. These findings could help improve online teaching practice and learning quality in future courses. | Hassan Haghparast Bidgoli | Follow This Link to Presentation Slides |
| A new framework facilitating student & external supervisor engagement in off-campus project work | The UCL Teaching and Learning Strategy is encouraging greater partnership with employers, resulting in more practical projects being completed away from the traditional UCL laboratory or study space. Examples include project module work hosted in industrial R&D facilities, the NHS, UCL satellite campuses and overseas workplaces where training is through a distance learning programme. While this diversity fosters unique skills development and job opportunities, it can lead to variation in student experience; the availability of local support, the access to learning resources, the extent and timing of formative feedback and the quality of external supervision. The aim of this presentation is, firstly, to overview the early experiences of the authors in conducting their first off-campus project modules on a distance learning MSc. Thereafter, the presentation will outline an early draft of a novel framework, being developed by the authors in 2014 with external expertise, to promote better formative feedback processes and guidance for both the student and external supervisor in off-campus project work. This presentation will serve as an opportunity for others in UCL to provide input at a draft stage of the framework, where support resources and formative feedback processes remain provisional. It is envisioned that this finalised work can serve as a generic resource for off-campus practical projects at UCL in order to reduce variability in the student-supervisor dynamic that naturally occurs across challenging and varying project environments. Such uneven student experience is often associated with negative impact on student satisfaction as well as project output and continuation. | Jamie Harle | Presentation |
| "Tell it like it is!" - using local service-user experience to challenge student attitudes towards people with learning disability | ’ Glover and Emerson (2013) estimated that 1,238 children and adults with ID die across England every year due to a failure in delivering the appropriate health care. A confidential enquiry into 247 regional deaths of people with ID in the South West between 2010-12 concluded that 37% of fatalities were avoidable has the right care been given. | Ian Harwood | Presentaton |
| Open Access research enables Open Access learning at UCL | We propose a poster showcasing UCL Discovery, the gateway to UCL’s research publications, and how this can be utilised by the online reading list software ReadingLists@UCL, to engage students. The online reading lists have benefited UCL students by providing seamless access to online resources. They integrate with Moodle and have been widely adopted by departments across UCL. Whilst enabling access to traditional library resources such as e-journals and books, this simple, flexible software can also bring UCL research into the learning experience by linking to UCL's institutional repository (UCL Discovery). UCL Discovery showcases UCL's research publications, giving access to journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, digital web resources, theses and much more, from all UCL disciplines. Where copyright permissions allow, a full text copy of each research publication is freely available from UCL Discovery. With UCL Discovery and ReadingLists@UCL both providing open access, the connection between the two services does more than enhance the student’s learning experience at UCL; it can potentially enable prospective students and other interested parties to benefit and learn from UCL research. We have an illustrative story of a UCL eXtend course. This is an open online course and needs to provide readings for its students that are also open access: academic journals hidden behind a paywall were problematic, however linking to Open Access resources, including research held in institutional repositories, allows a comprehensive range of readings to be made freely available. | Hazel Ingrey | Poster Presentation |
| Linear and non-linear virtual e-patients in ophthalmology for medical student teaching | Despite its importance in primary and emergency care, ophthalmology (eyes) is felt by medical students and physicians to be under-represented in the undergraduate curriculum. The opposing forces of increased training expectations and reduced training resources have greatly medical education as a whole. The use of electronic virtual patients (eViP) may help to address these issues, where clinical scenarios are played out on a computer screen and the learner can interact. These scenarios can be presented in a linear way, or a more interactive non-linear way, the latter allowing users to determine their own path through the case, to explore the options and potential consequences of the path they choose. We used the Moodle platform to create these scenarios based on the “red eye” and “visual disturbance”. The poster will demonstrate how we developed these branching scenarios and feedback from students. We will engage the participants through a poster presentation and using a computer/ipad to demonstrate the scenarios. | Lavnish Joshi | Poster |
| Audience response systems to augment interactive learning in ophthalmic education | Despite the criticisms of the lecture format, a number of methods can be employed to increase its interactivity. This includes the use of focused questioning during the lecture with the use of audience response systems (ARS). An ARS utilises wireless technology to permit the students to respond to questions posed by the lecturer, with the results being displayed graphically during the lecture. The use of ARS has traditionally involved text-based questions and answers, whereas ophthalmic education also requires students to recognise clinical signs, which would require an image-based ARS. Such an application of an ARS to image-based questions is relevant to other medical specialties such as radiology, however its use has not been widely employed, perhaps due to the difficulty of constructing such questions. This poster will present our experiences with ARS with doctors and allied health professionals in a variety of ophthalmic education settings, including undergraduate medical teaching and local ophthalmic departmental teaching. Advice on constructing suitable questions will also be outlined. A number of novel uses of the ARS will be described including providing a record of knowledge scores from departmental teaching sessions for clinical governance purposes. We will engage the audience with a live demonstration of the voting pad aswell as the poster presentation. | Lavnish Joshi | Poster Presentation |
| Museums as a focus for Research-Based Learning: Lessons from the Share Academy | Share Academy is a partnership project between University College London, University of the Arts London, and London Museums Group - funded by Arts Council England. Its aim is to build sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships between the higher education sector and specialist museums in London. In November 2013 Share Academy funded 15 projects, providing each with a budget of up to £10,000. Three projects are UCL collaborations which have an emphasis on enhancing student learning through research. This poster will provide an overview to the Share Academy Programme and the three UCL projects which aim to inspire and engage students through research-based Education. Varying in scope these projects demonstrate a breadth of possibility when incorporating research-based, real-world learning into the curriculum. The poster will showcase: Keats in London. UCL English undergraduates, postgraduates and staff will exchange their knowledge and skills with the expertise of Keats House. Together they will facilitate a range of events, from archival research, to family fun days, and guided walks. The Beautifulest Place on Earth. Drawing upon the importance of Red House in the present moment, Slade students, alongside academics, are to undertake artist residencies and deliver events and workshops for the general public, where they will explore legacies of politics and aesthetics, craft and skill, utopian visions, collaborations and communes. The History of Publishing. MA publishing students will work in interactive teams, alongside museum staff, to develop their ideas and produce a publication highlighting selected aspect of the William Morris Society’s collections. | Laura Lannin | Poster Presentation |
| Imaging Fruit & Veg With A Table-Top MRI Scanner – Self-Guided, Object-Based Learning with Group Work & Vlogging for Good Measure | We received an SLMS Education Innovation Fund Award in 2013 to buy a Terranova-MRI: Earth's Field MRI Teaching System to enhance the teaching on the MSc in Advanced Neuroimaging. This mini-MRI scanner comes with equipment and guides for a full set of experiments directly parallelling the content of our lectures. We are currently involving current MSc students, PhD students and staff from other departments in designing our mini-MRI activities and assessment methods. In groups, students will be able to carry out self-guided experiments and implement classic imaging sequences to demonstrate fundamental MRI concepts and deepen their understanding of MRI. Each group will produce a Vlog (Video blog), communicating their MRI learning experiences to an audience of 16 A-level students recruited from a school in North London. The latter will assess the Vlogs using appropriate criteria, tutors will assess the Vlogs according to more academic criteria and the MSc students will assess the individual contributions of each member of their group. All these assessment criteria have been developed by the MSc students themselves. We plan to gather feedback afterwards about the degree to which the task helped them understand MRI concepts and about its associated workload. We wish to present a summary of the agreed mini-MRI activities and assessment and the process and rational involved in their design. We also hope to include some preliminary images of fruit and vegetables and an early edit of one of the students’ Vlogs and to discuss the implications of students’ feedback. | Adam Liston | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Electronic Lab Books (e-Lab Books) – A Relevant, Time-Saving Assessment Approach Equipping Students for a Career in Research | Assessment of Lab-based teaching often requires students to answer a series of questions or to submit a report documenting experimental results. On the MSc in Advanced Neuroimaging, we offer students 13 two-hour, computer-based workshops. Each of these is convened by a different researcher from a different Neuroimaging discipline. Each workshop has different Learning Outcomes and requires mastery of software specific to that discipline. The difficulty and the type and number of tasks / questions appear to vary accordingly from workshop to workshop and it is a challenge to produce a coherent means of assessing them altogether. Bearing in mind that our overall course aim is to prepare students for a career in research, I remembered how my own lab book informally documented my research in a way that that was concise but thorough enough for me to be able to reproduce my results or for a successor to do so. It also contained graphs and figures which illustrated significant results but was by no means a formal write-up and was not time-consuming to produce. I asked students to produce something similar, documenting their workshops in an electronic Lab Book. Students’ learning and documentation was then assessed using four general criteria: 1) Completeness; 2) Conciseness / Thoroughness; 3) Correctness and 4) Insight. In our presentation, we wish to compare and contrast tasks set in two specific workshops, present and discuss extracts of e- Lab Books where these criteria are met and to summarise student feedback relating to the assessment approach. | Adam Liston | Poster Presentation |
| The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Digital Library | UCL Library Services has engaged in a landmark digitisation project, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Digital Library, making a selection of UCL’s materials relating to ancient Greece available electronically. The project will produce an open-access collection of 750 texts. These are taken from UCL Special Collections’ Euclid and Flaxman collections and the Institute of Archaeology’s site surveys, complemented by digitised versions of UCL Art Museum’s Flaxman plasters. Items to be digitised include the editio princeps of Euclid’s Elements published in Venice in 1482, and a further 82 editions printed before 1640. Together these volumes represent a considerable teaching and learning resource for researchers in the history of mathematics, archaeology, art history and book history. The Niarchos Digital Library will offer new insights into these outstanding collections by allowing researchers to zoom in to see annotations not easily visible to the naked eye, or compare gradual additions and changes in the texts. The resource will serve as a tool for researchers, allowing offsite access to the collections, and as a teaching tool by which students can have an opportunity to explore primary sources. Many items in these collections are extremely fragile or very rare; the resource will enable researchers to train students for close-up, detailed research into texts that necessarily have restricted access and might not normally be available to less expert researchers. This poster will explain the potential for integration with teaching and learning that the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Digital Library will offer. | Matt Mahon | Poster Presentation |
| When Dicaeopolis met Petrie: teaching Greek in UCL Museums | This session will present innovative ways of teaching Greek through a class in an undergraduate course of the Greek and Latin Department (GREK1001:Greek for Beginners A) which was taught in the Petrie Museum and which focused on objects with Greek from the museum collection. The paper will discuss ways in which the tutor and his teaching assistants have mingled the experience of teaching a language with a presentation of samples from material culture in order to: - engage and motivate students in their learning of Greek and communicate the idea that students form the Beginners course are able to understand the general meaning of short passages or inscriptions; - enable students to work together in teams in order to examine and translate the passages; - investigate research-like approaches e.g. students’ presentations, peer review etc.; - provide feedback from students and teaching assistants and encourage other members of stuff to hold classes in museums - promote the use of technology which facilitates the learning of the language: the curator of the Petrie museum was eager to demonstrate the new application of the museum (Tour of the Nile) and to encourage the students to use it with their i-pads and images of the 3D scanned objects. - create opportunities for the students to work for the Museum (mainly through internships) or perform research related to its collections. - make teaching public (photographs of the class were taken and a blog with the comments of tutor, teaching assistants and students was uploaded on the departmental website). | Antony Makrinos | Presentaton |
| Readiness for research-based learning | This workshop will offer a forum for participants to discuss what research-based learning might involve and consider the processes and practices required for moving towards a research-based pedagogy in response to the Provost’s message. The workshop will bring together experiences of UCL staff from different research and teaching contexts. It is designed as an awareness-raising session and will take a practical approach. Participants will be asked to structure and visualize their thinking and practices in relation to possible criteria for research-based learning, using an orientation spidergram activity, developed by Wenger, White and Smith in their book Digital Habitats (2009). It is hoped that this workshop activity will mediate further discussions with colleagues within and across faculties, departments and centres in UCL. | Elpida Makrygianni | Workshop |
| Creating an engaging environment for physiological experiments with a numerical simulator | Understanding the mathematical aspect of human physiology remains a daunting area for students. Many physiological principles are presented in class as equations, accompanied by static graphs. But students best understand the meanings of equations when they are seen in action, dynamically. For example, how does hormone secretion lead to a self-stabilising system? And what does this mean in terms of visible signs in the body? I have designed simulation software that can run on any home computer or lab PC, that allows students to interact in real-time with a physiological system. The program is unique in being able to model behaviour of a body at any time-scale - from seconds to years. It presents in dynamic graph form how any set of vital parameters vary, and allows the user to perturb the system at the touch of a button. The model calculates over 150 numerical variables that determine the state of the heart, lungs, kidneys, blood, bowel, liver, skin and brain. A small subset of these are shown on screen, for example outlining a scenario. In Cambridge University, the software has been used succesfully for 6 years in medical and biological sciences practical classes, where animal experiments have gradually been replaced by computer simulations. In each practical, a scenario sets up key parameters for a specific topic, and is accompanied by a workbook of experiments, with empirical questions that students must answer using the model. Crucially, in this age of computational biology, this software engages students with systems physiology. | Sanjay Manohar | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Creating a Platform for Effective Academic and Pastoral Care in Borderless Teaching | This paper presents UCL’s Bartlett School of Graduate Studies experience in translating a traditionally delivered face-to-face Masters programme into borderless teaching including a special focus on pastoral care. BSGS’s MSc course Facility and Environment Management was established in London in 1992, to cover the provision and management of facilities and support services that sustain high performing organisations. Since 2010 it is delivered in two locations: London and Singapore, maintaining parity in terms of the course content and its assessment. The delivery in Singapore utilises blended learning methods including concentrated periods of block teaching and live video conferencing. The students in both locations share the same virtual learning environment that supports the course modules by providing readings, seminar presentations including still and video, a discussion forum and coursework hand-in. So far there is little difference in student results and satisfaction between the different locations or between the different modes of delivery making this course an important example of successful borderless teaching. However we believed that a better student experience and greater parity in pastoral care can be achieved by embedding the possibility of real-time, visual, face-to-face contact with the course director as well as with all module tutors within the existing VLE. This has now been developed. The students themselves evaluated the success of the introduced changes via a bespoke questionnaire study. The results indicate that the clear structure within virtual learning environment supporting tutor’s visible social presents results in higher students satisfaction. The increase in students’ satisfaction was recorded in the yearly Student Evaluation Questionnaire. | Ljiljana Marjanovic-Halburd | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Improving the student experience and future pedagogy: Research-based actions in the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment | Two years ago, the Bartlett Faculty initiated a research-led, consultative approach to improving the student experience, and future pedagogy, two priority action areas identified by senior management. The approach has entailed: • appointing a recent student as a Research Assistant (one of the conference presenters); • defining our interpretation of the ‘student experience’ and ‘future pedagogy’; • consulting widely with students and staff through workshops, one on one discussions, discussion forums; • aggregating and analysing data from diverse sources to understand current attitudes, to identify aspects needing improvement, and to elicit priorities for change; • running innovative research-informed events for teaching staff such as Learning Lunches, and joint staff-student events such as the Bartlett Showcase; • appointing and training Bartlett Ambassadors; • extending the student-to-student buddy system; • improving communications throughout the five stages of the student life course; • using social media to reach out to our students; • sharing research on new pedagogy for built environment specialists through an annual Bartlett Pedagogy conference, including student papers; • working with CALT throughout. Achievements to date will be described, and we will outline our plans for formally evaluating the outcomes of the first two years. | Susan Ware | Presentation |
| Better Conversations: developing an online resource, in partnership with UCLeXtend,for students, clinicians and people with aphasia | Effective interventions to improve the everyday conversation skills of adults with aphasia (a language disorder most commonly caused by Stroke) and their conversation partners have a growing evidence base (Simmons-Mackie et al 2010; Beeke et al 2011, Wilkinson & Wielaert 2012). However learning and skill acquisition for conversation therapy places demands both on speech and language therapists (SLTs), as part of their continuing professional development, and on student SLTs. This poster reports on completed work, funded by the ESRC, in partnership with UCLeXtend and two third sector agencies, to produce a web based conversation therapy resource and network for student SLTs, SLTs and people with aphasia themselves: Better Conversations with Aphasia (https://extendstore.ucl.ac.uk/productcatalog=UCLXBCA) We were adopted as one of three ‘pathfinder’ courses to be hosted on UCL's newly-designed e-learning platform, UCLeXtend. Being a part of the platform ensures that there is longer term support for users and maintenance of resources. The website includes intervention case studies of clients with aphasia, structured learning pathways illustrating the process of intervention, videos of therapy sessions and commentaries from expert clinicians. For people with aphasia, there is support and information. This poster will explain the development of the website, the structured delivery of materials and the integration of the website into student learning. A demonstration of the resource will be available, via a laptop. Clinically, this website and a related network represents a novel resource for students and professionals wishing to deliver this increasingly important therapeutic approach and for clients new to conversation therapy. | Jane Maxim | Poster |
| Does mode of assessment influence the grade and student experience within a research-based degree programme? Typed vs. handwritten examination answers: A pilot study. | The ubiquitous use of computers and the general emphasis on the acquisition of generic IT skills within research-based higher education has led to increasing discussion as to whether timed examination essays should be written on computers rather than by hand. However, research to date presents conflicting evidence as to whether typing rather than writing confers either an advantage or disadvantage with respect to the grade awarded, or has a positive or negative influence on the student experience. In the current study, 65 Third Year BSc Psychology students completed one typed and one handwritten essay under timed (one hour) mock examination conditions. Each pair of essays was marked by the student’s seminar tutor. Information on typing/handwriting speed, essay length, preference of format, gender, and other relevant variables (e.g., marker) were collected. Controlling for these factors, a preliminary analysis indicates that typed essays were on average awarded a mark 0.5% lower than handwritten essays. The mark assigned to an essay was predicted by marker, typing speed, essay length, and ease of marking. Students preferred the typed condition, as it was the format they used for the majority of their other work and was more resonant with their general method of communicating, but felt that they should have received practice at typing under timed conditions. Both participants and markers supported the adoption of voluntary typed essay examinations for both formative and summative assessment. The results provide support for the implementation of typed examinations in UK higher education. This research received CALT funding. | Anne Schlottmann | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| The Integrated Engineering Programme | UCL Engineering has been carrying out a review of all the undergraduate programmes that it offers with a view to introducing an integrated framework that still offers discipline specific programmes but which gives students access to a broader range of interdisciplinary opportunities across the full range of topics within the faculty. The aim is to create a bold, distinctive education across the faculty that combines our traditional strength in disciplinary engineering fundamentals, leverages past experience and expertise to create a curriculum structure that promotes an interdisciplinary, research- and problem-based approach, and that seeks to create well rounded graduates who are innovative thinkers who will challenge and change the nature of engineering. This talk will outline the vision of the Integrated Engineering Programme and highlight the key changes are being put in place to achieve this vision. | John Mitchell | Presentation |
| Can UCL offer personalised CPD? A review of one department’s experience of creating a graduate programme for busy healthcare professionals | UCL has many strengths, but providing CPD is not one of them. Web searches for “CPD UK universities” do not find UCL. As an institution we assume that prospective students will seek out full- or part- time graduate programmes in specialist areas. However in healthcare our competitors have a different approach. Their offerings assume that growing numbers of professionals are seeking more flexible learning opportunities, with more choice of what and how they study (full- or part-time, on line, with or without award). The ability to move smoothly from studying a single module (for credit, but with no award) to an award bearing programme is another feature which appeals to professionals seeking to update their skills and improve their career prospects. There are signs things are changing at UCL. In early September 2013 the CPD and Short Course Development Team began working together to maximise UCL’s global educational impact through the development of a broad range of innovative CPD and Short Courses. This presentation will review our experience in the UCL Centre for Health Informatics & Multiprofessional Education of designing and launching a graduate programme which allows students to tailor a study programme to meet their individual needs. We will discuss the obstacles we faced and share the lessons learned. Although the programme is new and aimed at healthcare professionals, our approach to designing and marketing this programme should be of interest to other faculties and central professional services. | Jeannette Murphy | Presentation |
| E-logbooks for clinical skills programmes: using mobile technologies to support learning and assessment | We are proposing an e-logbook for mobile devices that will support more direct engagement between the learner and their tutors; allow assessment of individual learning gains relative to individual learning goals; simplify logbook data entry for the student; be integrated with other curriculum tools; support peer-to-peer learning; provide a platform for reflection of practice with online feedback and grading; allow tutors to observe and comment on student progress. Pilot version of the e-logbook was developed using the Moodle platform and IPad mini (Apple, USA). After piloting, the logbook was further developed using technical input. Evaluation split into two phases: Phase 1 – E-logbook (with accompanying usage guide) released to 5 current EDI Paediatric Dentistry students. Set of exercises given to each student to perform with corresponding exercises to be carried out by the tutors over a 5 day period. One-to-one support given as necessary throughout this period. E-logbook further revised following this feedback. Phase 2 – E-logbook re-released to initial pilot group and then after a short evaluation period discussed in a half-day group session to determine how feedback from phase 1 has been dealt with. Minor modifications after this evaluation cycle. The results of phase 1 will be presented at the CALT conference in April 2014. | Susan Parekh | Poster Presentation |
| Evaluation Success of Peer-Assisted Learning Scheme for HCSCGS14 Phonetics and Phonology and HCSCGS15 Linguistics | This paper discusses our Peer-Assisted Learning scheme (PALS) for students studying phonetics and linguistics on the MSc Speech and Language Sciences programme, funded by CALT. Successful completion of the HCSCGS14 Phonetics and Phonology and HCSCGS15 Linguistics modules is essential for students to go on to be registered as a Speech and Language Therapist, but we have a limited amount of time to prepare students for their examinations and in particular, to teach them the practical analytical skills needed for clinical practice. The PALS was established this year in response to students’ feedback which consistently shows a need for more time to practice these skills. Our MSc students come from a variety of different backgrounds and some have already completed an undergraduate degree involving the study of phonetics and linguistics. We recruited twelve such students to act as tutors to groups of 4-6 students. The tutorials took place for 11 weeks, between November 2013 and February 2014, with each session lasting 1-2 hours. Each time the tutors completed a time sheet and logged a brief summary of topics discussed on Moodle. We will present data from students’ evaluation questionnaires designed specifically to assess the success of this scheme, illustrated by individual responses. It is believed that the tutors will gain valuable experience of teaching, to support their own development, and student learners will gain additional opportunities to practices their analytical skills in linguistics and phonetics in a safe environment, i.e., with their peers rather than with a lecturer. | Alexandra Perovic | Poster Presentation |
| The Alchemy of Team Work: Cultivating creativity through team research in yr 1 Architecture education | 1/. Architectural Education tends to be fairly individualistic, self-referential and quite a monastic operation during the 5 yrs of its duration. If not addressed, it can develop into a very competitive, uncaring and self-centered studio culture, with very little in common amongst fellow students. In addition to this potential problem, there is never one answer to any single design problem, an issue which often cause a huge amount of anxiety to students entering higher education. 2/. Our aim will be to present and discuss with you how a collective / team research type project counteracts these issues . To start with , team work is a major challenge to the students : progressively though it slowly initiates them to a culture of team experiments, a mutual trust and support between tutors and fellow students which proves inspirational in their research explorations. It is this manner of searching the unknown that gradually solidifies their excitement and confidence in taking risks, and becoming original thinkers and designers. 3/.This way of learning and researching as members of a team can be invaluable to other communities across UCL, as it is teaching the students to ask the right questions , rather than giving them readymade answers that will enable them to mindlessly succeed in whatever they chose to study. Initially It is a shock to the A level culture, but it very quickly initiates them to being responsible citizens as well as mad, visionary dreamers. Exploring parallel to all sorts of experts in various fields, also teaches them humility parallel to memorable and exciting experiences. | Frosso Pimenides | Presentation |
| Embedding Research in a First Year Undergraduate Course | We shall present details of a first year undergraduate course in Anatomy and Developmental Biology. These subjects are demanding for students to understand so early on in their undergraduate career (the course is taught in the first term). Additionally, we have managed to embed the research conducted at UCL in these areas into the course. This is achieved through some innovative practical sessions within the lectures. Further, we expose the students to research themes related to the course through a series of research talks given by leading researchers in an unassessed component of the course. | Stephen Price | Poster Presentation |
| Developing an Online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Video Tutorial Library (extending competence acquisition through online tutorials) | This presentation will showcase an innovative e-learning resource that has been developed in the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology department comprising video tutorials that demonstrate how and how not to deliver competent cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This library of tutorials augments traditional teaching, supporting the students to learn experientially in their clinical practice and is based upon the CBT competence framework also developed at UCL. There are future plans to grow the resource and to evaluate its effectiveness. As a consequence of creating this resource a foundation has been laid to enable more e-learning materials to be developed. The presentation will include a summary of how the resource was developed, a brief demonstration of it, feedback from a student on how it has been helpful and an indication of future plans | Neil Ralph | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Developing psychological literacy through enquiry and evidence in a first year introductory class | Our goal is to enhance research embedded teaching and develop psychological research literacy by engaging students in the cycle of enquiry and evidence. In our planned introductory class, students will find themselves at both ends of the microscope, as subject and scientist. They will learn how to turn questions into testable ideas, to gather data and provide answers. By active participation they will encounter the large scope of theories, research methodology and concepts that constitute psychology. More importantly, they will learn how to use those concepts, as scientists, participants in experiments, and active learners. This psychological literacy will allow students to transfer their learning to real-world problems. In our current project, we are creating a novel system that uses audience response handsets to run and analyse experiments mid-lecture. For the first time, we will be able to bring the full range of psychology laboratory experiments into the lecturehall, situating theory in the students’ own behaviour. Traditionally, students only participate in experiments as part of a subject pool or when learning about research methods. These activities are often quite separate from theory lectures. This introduces a separation between theory and experimentation, when a central goal of undergraduate education in psychology is to show how these are linked. In contrast, students will experience the cycle of enquiry and evidence through research embedded teaching in our new module, giving them the psychological literacy to integrate knowledge across psychology and apply it to the world around them. | Daniel Richardson | |
| Molecular Biosciences undergraduate research symposium -an introduction to scientific conference participation | The final year undergraduate project module in Molecular Biosciences allows the in-depth exploration of a subject. Students undertake either a research project, with experimental bench work, or an investigative (literature) project, entailing a review and assessment of a chosen topic. They present their findings as a written dissertation and a short seminar. Previously these oral presentations have taken place over a period of 5 days, to a small number of academic staff and peers in each session. This academic year the week-long assessment has been replaced by a one-day research symposium, giving students an opportunity to experience a conference setting in parallel sessions, with all students and staff attending. Abstracts are reviewed and submitted before the symposium. The program consists of 15-minute talks (including questions and answers), assessed by academic staff. Second year students are also invited to attend as non-speaking participants to experience first hand the conference format. All students are encouraged to contribute to the questioning and a prize is awarded for the best question in each session. The symposium takes place before submission of the final dissertation; this directs students to focus on the most salient points and context of their research for both the oral presentation and the written thesis. Additional pertinent points raised during the symposium can be included in the report. The event closes with a reception to which interested relevant companies are invited, allowing informal discussion time and networking opportunities for the future graduates. | Suzanne Ruddy | Presentation |
| Partnership and collaboration: involving students in a service evaluation project | This presentation will describe a service evaluation project being carried out by UCL Speech and Language Therapy in collaboration with TALK, a third-sector organisation providing support for people with communication difficulties following a stroke. The focus will be on the involvement of students and service users as partners in the project. Student and service user perspectives will be presented, with an emphasis on the learning and professional development opportunities afforded by their involvement. A qualitative research design (face-to-face semi-structured interviews and questionnaires) was used to elicit the views and experiences of service users and families. Three final year MSc speech and language therapy students were recruited to carry out the data collection. They received training in facilitative interviewing techniques appropriate for people with communication difficulties and in qualitative analysis methods. They also spent time at the groups run by TALK to gain first-hand experience of the service. Involvement in this project yielded a number of benefits for the students relevant to their role as future healthcare professionals, including: working in an investigative team to develop research questions and materials; engagement in a “real-life” project which will make a difference; a clear understanding of the role of third sector organisations and their partnership with clinical practice; development of key professional skills in interviewing people with communication difficulties; increased awareness of the impact of communication difficulties on people’s lives; increased understanding of and skills in service evaluation. Service users benefitted from the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way to service development. | Carol Sacchett | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| Welcoming international students to UCL:what are the seven key lessons we have learned..? | Title: Welcoming international students to UCL: what are the seven key lessons we have learned..? Authors: (1) Dr. Caroline Selai, UCL Institute of Neurology; (2) Dr. Sushrut Jadhav, UCL Division of Mental Health Sciences Background and activities: The UCL Cultural Consultation Service for staff and students (CCS) was launched on 01-Nov-2011. In addition to offering confidential consultations to staff and students who are experiencing difficulties which they believe may have a cultural component, the CCS has a range of other activities. For example, we have devised a number of bespoke interventions for groups and whole departments, convened workshops for staff and/or students at Departmental and Faculty level, organised “Grand Rounds” discussions, and convened large interactive workshops open to all new UCL international students. We are involved in research and continue to collect a rich data-base of personal experiences from staff and students. Emerging findings A number of themes are emerging. These are broadly grouped as: (i) expectations and background cultural context; (ii) migration and the sense of self; (iii) pedagogical issues; (iv) social networks and inter-personal issues; (v) groups, collaboration and team-work; (vi) academic cultures and sub-cultures; (vii) task and process. In this presentation we distil seven key messages. Summary We present a summary of the work of the CCS (the first 2 years) and the findings emerging from our consultations, interviews and interactive workshops including positive opportunities, challenges; suggested changes; feedback; review; further suggestions for the future. | Caroline Selai | Poster Presentation |
| Maximising the potential of Moodle in medical education: an online self-study module created in partnership with students | The Department of Applied Health Research teaches population screening to year 4 UCL MBBS students annually. We have traditionally delivered this material as a lecture followed by small-group sessions. However, students fed back that the lecture might be better delivered via a self-study module; it would offer students greater flexibility as to how they accessed material, enabling them to tailor their learning. They also wanted to better understand the relevance of screening to their future clinical practice. We secured an Electronic Learning Development Grant in May 2013 to adapt the lecture to an online self-study module. The module, developed with extensive student involvement at all stages, comprises short lecture casts, MCQs and links to resources. The design and content was determined in consultation with a UCL Virology Foundation Doctor who is also a member of the development team. Two year 6 medical students filmed interviews with doctors on the how they apply screening principles in their clinical practice. A range of year 5 and 6 students took part in a focus group to inform the site’s development and provided feedback on the test site. Students will be invited to access the site in February 2014, prior to a face-to-face small-group session. We will evaluate its acceptability to students and tutors, and use Moodle’s analytic capacity to capture the type and extent of use. In this presentation, we propose to demonstrate key elements of the study resource, summarise our learning from its development and share interim evaluation findings. | Jessica Sheringham | Presentation |
| Use of portfolio to assess the learning of a diverse group of students taking an online course in Economic Evaluation | The objective of this study was to explore and evaluate the use of portfolio for summative assessment of a small group of MSc students from diverse backgrounds learning online in a new discipline. Specifically, the study aimed to answer the following questions: 1) Is the portfolio a reliable and appropriate means of assessing learning on this course?, 2) Do the portfolio allow individual students’ diverse backgrounds to be accommodated in assessed writing?, 3) What are the students’ and tutors’ perceptions and experience of this assessment method? A triangulation of different approaches was adopted for data collection, using focus group discussions and student responses to an online questionnaire, portfolio content and teaching staff reflections. Thematic analysis was then used to synthesize the data collected and highlight key findings. Results of the preliminary analysis shows that the students were unanimously positive about the portfolio as an assessment method. They generally preferred this form of the portfolio that they were required to submit all of the practical exercises into one document, instead of choosing which practical exercises to put into the portfolio. One of the main concerns about the portfolio was the level of reflection. They recommended that a clearer instruction on the content and level of reflection could be helpful. | Jolene Skordis-Worrall | Presentation |
| Research-based approaches for teaching chemistry to first year biologists | We describe the development of library and experimental research-based coursework assignments, which form an integral part of a new first year module BIOL1007“Fundamentals of Biology.” This new module employs an innovative, biology-led approach to teaching chemistry. Each section of the course introduces students to a specific topic in biology (biology and water; biology and colour; biology and ageing) before exploring the underlying chemical principles. In the section on “biology and colour” students were introduced to the use of databases in research and then worked in groups to create a “biochrome database.” Each group was assigned a colour-related trait, and asked to research its chemical/physical structure, source/biosynthesis, biological function and evolution/history. Students submitted individual entries on one of the four topics but worked together to endure consistency of presentation and avoid duplicating material. In place of an end-of-year unseen exam students will carry out a short laboratory or field based research project in term 3. Field projects will be based at the historic UCL field station at Blakeney Point. Students will be introduced to the study area and basic field techniques before going on to design and carry out their own projects in small groups. Laboratory projects will follow the same well-established model. Laboratory projects and protocols for investigating the genetic basis of aging in yeast and the relationship between eye pigment and mating success in Drosophila were designed and piloted with a group of 4 undergraduate volunteers in July 2013. | Hazel Smith | Follow this Link to Presentation Slides |
| When students develop e-learning material for their peers | The Department of Chemical Engineering have long had a desire to develop e-learning material for their undergraduate modules. Unfortunately, given our very high student/staff ratio, there is never enough time to do this properly. With funding from the Faculty, an ExxonMobil teaching award and industry, ten undergraduate students were hired for eight weeks during the summer 2013 to develop e-learning material based on Moodle for most of the first year modules. The posts were advertised to all undergraduates and students applied by submitting a one page application detailing what they wanted to develop, and why they were right for the job. The selected students were mainly from Year 2, but with one Year 1 student and one Year 3 student. The experience far surpassed the expectations. The students, who only knew each other vaguely beforehand, came together as a team from day 1. The Year 3 student assumed a clear leadership position and led the team brilliantly. The material they developed was imaginative, comprehensive, technically sound, and with just the right dash of humour. The material was much better than what a member of academic staff would have developed, in particular, in terms of the feedback included for multiple choice questions etc. The students also developed videos to support some of the learning. The presentation will show examples of all the material produced, and will discuss the experience of letting students take the lead in developing e-learning material for their friends. | Eva Sorensen | Presentation |
| The early bird catches the worm - exposing undergraduate students to research methodology and critical thinking about economics and the environment using the software package Mathematica | The Economics of the Environment (Econ7007) is an interdisciplinary course combining material from natural and earth science as well as environmental economics and economic policy. The course was co-taught by two lecturers with diverse academic background from the UCL Department of Economics. A crucial element of the course was to introduce students to environmental and economic modelling using the software package Mathematica. This practical task exposed students to the stylised methods used in academic and policy research. In weekly computer practicals students worked with pre-prepared Mathematica notebooks which contained simplified models similar to those used in research. Students interpreted and amended model simulations to get a closer insight how research and policy papers are produced. We noticed that guiding students through research methods at an early stage in their education makes them reflect on the validity and sensitivity of model predictions and increases the quality they discuss economic models and predictions. Using the models introduced in the course, students created their own research report to a topic of their own choice. All research was presented and discussed during the last week of term in a conference-like environment. | Christian Spielmann | Presentation |
| Integrating Open Educational Practice and Public Engagement: a case study from a less-widely taught language community | In recent years the global Open Education movement has seen a remarkable widening of paradigm. Not only have Open Educational Resources (OER), arguably ‘the most visible impact of the Internet on education to date’ (Brown, 2008), continued to go from strength to strength, but the move towards Openness in Education increasingly also extends beyond resources to include educational practices, for which the MOOC-phenomenon is just the best-known example. Defined as practices which ‘support the production, use and re-use of high quality OER, which promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path’ (ICDE, 2011), Open Educational Practices (OEP) are the logical extension of the principles behind OER to ensure the full potential of Openness in Education can be achieved. This extension of paradigm is mirrored by the similar transition of Knowledge Transfer (KT), involving non-traditional audiences into the research process, to Public Engagement (PE). Whereas KT, in the Open Knowledge Foundation’s (2013) basic definition ‘knowledge being given by one party to another party’, was largely understood to be one-directional, PE suggests bi-directionality, interaction, dialogue. Rather than just sharing knowledge with non-traditional audiences – which was an important step in itself – PE includes full two-way engagement and exchange of knowledge with the public. The presentation reports on a pilot project, based in a less-widely-taught language department, that investigates how these two parallel developments can be integrated and “the potential of new forms of public engagement enabled by new technology” (Scanlon, 2013) realised, before concluding with some preliminary findings and recommendations. | Ulrich Tiedau | Presentation |
| Teaching self-awareness, diversity and reflection to support an integrated engineering curriculum | The Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) at UCL is on course to roll out across the faculty via a complete Year 1 engineering student cohort of approximately 650 at the start of the 2014 autumn term. Pilot projects are currently being rolled out to test, develop and refine the key aspects of the IEP prior to its official launch. Students are initially introduced to the fundamental elements of engineering design and thinking, successful team working and effective communication and professional practices, prior to participating in a 1 week intensive, Problem Based Learning (PBL) based ‘Engineering Scenario’. The approach to learning is three-tiered where formal introductions, continuous practice and timely reflection are established as its foundation. The PBL environment is being strengthened by a programme to give students the tools and vocabulary to help them identify, fully explore, utilise and develop their natural talents and personal strengths throughout their engineering education. Through such exercise, students become familiar with a common language, used by employers, and develop a heightened awareness of each other’s potential when working to contribute to shared team goals. It will also help them deal with and possibly limit the occurrence of problems associated with leadership and assignment of roles, communication, time management, and division of responsibility often experienced when working in teams. Additionally, addressing this level of self-awareness, students build mutual respect; the programme is designed to produce graduates that are more easily attuned to top companies’ values in diversity and inclusivity that essentially are founded on respect. A strengths-based personal profiling and self-assessment tool is introduced and explored to give the students a chance at understanding the type of engineering activity they enjoy and feel they can excel in. Helping to realise their unique potential to successfully take on leadership roles, perhaps even seek opportunities and instil confidence to take ‘leadership beyond authority’, is also regarded as a pivotal motive for the revamp and redesign of the UCL Engineering Year 1 curriculum. | Submission by Emanuela Tilley Presented by Jan Peters | Presentation |
| Innovative ways to enhance the laboratory experience for large class sizes | Gaining fundamental experience in wet laboratory experimental work is a critical aspect of life sciences research. However, the provision of this experience has traditionally been time consuming, expensive and difficult to provide to large class sizes. The Research Department of Structural & Molecular Biology provides undergraduate teaching specific for degree programme students registered with the department and for students in degree programmes from other departments within the Faculty of Life Sciences and for students in other Faculties at UCL. We have used e-innovations to enhance the student practical experience in molecular biology and biochemistry, so that understanding of key concepts in experimental laboratory work is ensured through the provision of: • pre-practical quizzes to ensure student understanding of the laboratory work prior to the practical session (from 2006) • an online interactive practical that is an exact replica of a laboratory experiment performed on the second year Molecular Biology course (from 2007) • student-generated videos explaining the different practical techniques in use on the first year Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (from 2011). These resources enable students to visualize and practice techniques prior to entering the experimental laboratory. Student feedback on these innovations has been very positive, highlighting the fact that resources that have been specifically targeted for an increasingly ‘visual’ and online student body can successfully enhance student understanding and enjoyment of their practical experience. Use of the resources embeds new technologies in the curriculum in a way that enables informative practicals to be delivered effectively to class sizes of 650+ students. | Andrea Townsend-Nicholson | Presentation |
| Using collections for research-based learning | Over the last ten years, centrally funded, national initiatives have highlighted the need to improve training in research skills for doctoral students, especially in the humanities. However little has been done to equip students for research before they reach this stage, or even to give undergraduates the experience they need to make informed decisions about a future in research, let alone to gain a taste for its excitement. Partly to address this need, UCL Library Special Collections and UCL Museums and Collections have joined forces to develop an unusual module. This year, each student in the first year of UCL’s groundbreaking BASc course has been allocated a research team and an item from the collections through which to explore and develop research questions and skills. The objects range from an early printed book bound in tortoiseshell, to a copper alloy axehead, to hair samples, all held in UCL’s own libraries, museums or other collections. This presentation will explain what is required of the students and staff involved, and some of the outcomes of the students’ projects. It will also discuss some of the benefits of this style of object-based learning, both for students and staff. Unusually, the module requires BASc students to negotiate at an early stage the challenges of formulating appropriate research questions for interdisciplinary work across the conventional disciplines of Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences. Questions can address text, material, production, provenance, or use. The module also requires academic staff, librarians and archivists, and museum curators to collaborate in sharing their research knowledge. The presentation will give a flavour of the surprises and rewards of this approach, for both students and staff. | Tabitha Tuckett | Object Based Learning in The Art Museum (The Print room) |
| A Flipping Challenge | There is increasing recognition that traditional face-to-face IT training no longer provides the flexibility and responsiveness that learners require. Consequently, many training organisations have been leveraging recent developments in classroom pedagogy for IT training. One blended learning approach that has been successful in both academia and the workplace is “flipped learning” where face-to-face instruction is preceded by online homework so that classroom time is available for consolidation, integration, investigation and reflection. At UCL, training interventions are often closely coupled to academic and scholarly concerns, with an audience deeply engaged in research tasks and with a pressing need to acquire just-in-time specialist IT skills. Experience and awareness of research convince us that this highly motivated and learning-ready community do not want to spend classroom time watching demonstrations and listening to explanations that could be delivered online and on demand. Given the high demand for training in the statistical package SPSS, we decided to: • flip the classroom • adopt a modified challenge-based approach We now provide material previously delivered face-to-face as online screencasts and documentation supported by an online discussion forum. We then invite learners to a challenge-based classroom event facilitated by IT trainers, where they put their newly acquired knowledge and skills to use with authentic data. In the presentation, we will briefly discuss our motivations and the development of this approach, and the challenges posed. We will present the results of an evaluation study and will go on to discuss the possible extension of this innovative approach to further training interventions. (249 words excluding title) | Jim Tyson | Presentation |
| Piloting of a Text Messaging Based Student Evaluation Portal | The aim of the project is to pilot a mobile text messaging (SMS) portal for formative evaluation of the new MRes in Brain Sciences programme. The MRes is multidisciplinary and will attract students from a variety of science backgrounds, thereby necessitating ongoing student evaluation of the course. The use of SMS will be investigated as a form of communication that not only resonates with students, but that also has the advantage over traditional methods in supporting formative evaluations that can be captured immediately in real time throughout the course and at the convenience of students. A feasibility study confirmed that the portal would enable texts to be sent and received anonymously as well as allow for responses by email to ensure equality of access. Student focus groups and questionnaires prior to and following the project were designed to compare attitudes to student feedback; technology ownership and patterns of use; attitudes to the SMS text function in relation to the anticipated usefulness of the weekly evaluations of the course; and attitudes and experiences of different methods of giving course feedback. Students were prompted to provide weekly feedback via SMS within an hour of each lecture together with an option for further comments. The SMS text system was also used to issue task, deadline and schedule reminders. The aggregate responses will be evaluated in relation to their number, frequency and timing, and a thematic analysis of content will also be undertaken. A summary of the data so far will be discussed. | Jacqueline van der Spuy | Presentation |
| What would make a supportive online environment for assessed group work at UCL? | What are the major requirements for an online environment to support and assess students’ collaborative work? Online groupwork platforms provided by UCL include MyPortfolio, Wordpress, and UCL Wiki - but to what extent do these meet staff and student needs? Decisions about platforms and designs for learning within them should be informed by educational needs and principles rather than technical capabilities. Our previous work within UCL has identified a number of considerations including feedback opportunities, ease of use, ownership, recognition of individual contributions, and administration, as well as groupwork dynamics including presence, coordination, and opportunities to give each other attention. We know that perceptions about the relative importance of these considerations will vary according to context (discipline, subject area, module and/or learning activity). In order to shape UCL's provision of groupwork platforms, we would like to find out more about these perceptions from stakeholders including whether any critical requirements emerge and how similar or different these are between contexts. We will summarise our working list of considerations graphically on a poster and invite attendees to relate them to their own contexts, indicate their relative importance, and contribute others we may have omitted. The poster and its contributions will provide a basis for deeper exploration of online groupwork platforms at a future ARENA workshop. We anticipate that the outcomes from these exchanges will be written up as a briefing which will inform institutional decisions about setting up a collaborative environment for assessed work, as well as a resource for the Teaching and Learning Portal. | Mira Vogel | Poster Presentation |
| Making History with UCL Students | We would like to offer a presentation of the design and initial outcomes of a radical curriculum initiative in the first year History curriculum, showcasing a new course entitled "Making History". This is intended to give students at the outset of their studies an experience of how historians investigate and present their findings to a range of audiences. During their first term at UCL, students work in small teams with tutor guidance to undertake original investigations based in London, with its rich array of primary and secondary sources of historical relevance. They present the curated outcomes of their explorations online via UCL's MyPortfolio system and in a live presentation to peers and tutors, incorporating an element of peer assessment. The focus is not only on the final product, but on the process of collaborative research, critical analysis and conclusions drawn, with an explicit highlighting of personal and professional skills and attributes appropriate to the reality of academic practice. | Paul Walker | Presentation |
| The Flipped Classroom – could it work in a Medical School? | The Flipped Classroom – could it work in a Medical School? A tutor's experiential guide to putting a Medical School Curriculum on Video (work in progress). Lectures do have their place in universities but are often not a popular nor effective method of teaching our learners. In the medical school we are transitioning, as much as possible, to small group learning. Even the small groups often have a lecture style element due to the nature of needing to prepare the student with information before the practical problem solving can take place. My hope is to further change the culture by adopting the Flipped Classroom approach to Learning (Large et al, 2000 & Talbert, 2012). By producing short, expertly edited teaching videos which are supported with interactive assessments the students will prepare for classroom / clinical teaching at home. The classroom / clinical area will now be free for facilitated practical experimentation and collaborative problem solving. Once both phases of learning are complete the student will be ready to practice the skills immediately on a patient in the clinical area. This presentation is an account of a tutor's attempt to sell the Flipped Classroom idea, gain funding and begin to film and edit the video material | Deirdre Wallace | Presentation |
| Peer led workshop teaching: enhancing research-led teaching for Masters students, and developing the teaching skills of research students and early career researchers | Background: In response to (i) MSc student feedback requesting more workshops linking theory to practice, and (ii) requests from research students and junior postdocs based in the UCL Institute of Neurology to be given more opportunities to teach and develop skills in this area, we invited the latter to deliver workshops for MSc Clinical Neuroscience students. Research students/postdocs were asked to design workshops in their own area of interest, and attended an in-house “teaching tips” course before delivering their sessions. Workshops were attended by 4 (min) to 30 (max) MSc students, took place in the lab, scanner or computing cluster room, and lasted 2-3 hours. Feedback and assessment: MSc students were asked to evaluate the sessions. There was anecdotal evidence that the benefit was likely to be different for each group (didactic - MSc, reflective -PhD) and we devised more thorough assessment to explore this further. Aim of study: We aimed to assess the benefit of peer led workshop teaching to (i) the research student or postdoc delivering it, and (ii) the MSc students who took part. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the two groups. Interim results: The design and delivery of peer-led, interactive workshops has benefits in skills and knowledge development, and the student experience; enhancing research-led teaching for Masters students, and developing the teaching skills of research students and early career researchers. We believe this pilot study, conducted at the UCL Institute of Neurology, will also be of interest to other disciplines. | Daniela Warr | Presentation |
| Students as Change Agents | The concept of students a 'change agents' gets students doing research projects that will lead to change in their departments. From inception to completion, students lead on projects that create solutions to the teaching and learning problems they identify. Through participation in an action research project, students become active partners in their learning at university. Next academic year, we the are aiming to provide UCL students with the opportunity to carry out projects of their own. Acting as apprentice researchers, the 'change agents' scheme represents a new way for students to engage with university life. Rather than a more passive student voice where concerns are expressed but there is no route for direct action, students will be invited to take responsibility for their teaching and learning through these projects. Students are invited to have a vision for the future and a commitment to making that vision a reality through evidence-based research. Students benefit not only from the chance to constructively influence their learning but also gain useable skills that will enhance their employability prospects. | Abbie Willett | Poster |
| Personal tutoring and research-based education at UCL | In UK higher education there has been a tendency to equate personal tutoring with pastoral support, a role that Personal Tutors often feel ill at ease and not always best placed to offer advice. Recently, the UCL Centre for the Advancement for Learning & Teaching (CALT) has been attempting to advocate a view of personal tutoring that emphasises its potential for enhancing students' learning development. This is an approach, we believe, that is conducive to a research-based approach towards student learning. Personal Tutors are able to offer their considerable expertise as researchers, inspiring and exploring students' own views of research and assisting them in developing their skills, attitudes and learning motivations to engage in their own study. This presentation will examine the contribution of personal tutoring in cultivating a research-based learning environment in UCL. Initial data from our investigations into personal tutoring practices has produced some evidence that students appreciate it when their Personal Tutors share their own research and academic interests with them. Our hope it that this presentation will inspire Personal tutors to approach tutorials with their students as an opportunity to engage students with their current work and help them better understand what it means to be a researcher in their discipline. | Abbie Willett | Presentation |