The E-Learning Unit winter event took place on 6th December and this year we focussed on our E-Learning Production Scheme. 4 members of staff kindly agreed to present the projects that they had been involved in funded by the scheme and we were really happy to see so many people join us.

In this article, you will find details of the project presentations, including links to the recordings and further information and resources.

The next call for the E-Learning Production scheme will be in semester B. If you are interested in making an application, look out in our usual channels for the announcement. If you already have an idea for a project, you can contact us to discuss it now. We are happy to advise on the types of project that are most likely to get funded and to help with shaping your proposal. Drop us a line on elearning@qmul.ac.uk.

Once again, thank you to the presenters for giving up their time to come and talk about what they have done and to all those that joined us and made the event such a success.

• Welcome and introduction from Brett Lucas
• Developing an online community for year abroad students
• Understanding clinical governance
• Enhanced practical science teaching
• Ready, steady…film!
• Our presenters gathered to answer questions from the audience.
• Further resources

Welcome and introduction

Brett started off the event by covering some of the highlights of the year from the E-Learning Unit perspective:

• Student survey – our student survey earlier in the year yielded our largest response rate ever and gave us some extremely useful insight into students views of QMplus.
• QMplus refresh – the summer of 2017 saw a major change to the look and feel of QMplus, bringing a fresher more modern look. The results of the student survey were important in driving many of the changes that we made.
• QMplus Hub, our e-portfolio system has seen increased usage over the year and is now undergoing development in readiness for the QMUL Model.
• We have also seen a siginificant increase in the use of QMplus.
• We also made a major upgrade to Q-Review, our lecture recording service, over the summer of 2017 bringing improvements to the service and some new features.

He then provided an overview of the focus of today’s event, our e-learning production scheme detailing the reasoning behind the scheme’s existence and describing how it works.

Developing an online community for year abroad students

Birgitta Hall, the Year Abroad Development Manager in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, described the project that she had been involved in to develop an online community for year abroad students. Participating in a year abroad is compulsory for all language students and has an impact on around 400 students at any one time…not just those who are actually on their year abroad but also on those who are planning their year and those who are returning. In the past, a group on Facebook has been used to provide support however this has not been as successful recently.

Brigitta’s project developed an online support space using QMplus Hub, our e-portfolio and group working system. The space is still in the early days of use but students have been finding it useful already and Brigitta hopes that usage will increase as time goes on.

Understanding clinical governance

Amitha Ranauta, Clinical Senior Lecturer, and Ben Audsley, E-Resources Manager, from the Institute of Dentistry presented their work in developing a resource to help dentistry students understand clincical governance. This is a crucial topic for students to grasp and Amitha and Ben wanted to bring together materials which were often in different places, together into something more cohesive. At the centre of their learning materials were situational judgement tests, something that students have to develop practical experience of. Their project employed two Dentistry students who shared the work on the project. These students put together a learning package which included filming scenarios and then using an e-learning authoring tool called Articulate Storyline to make these into an interactive experience for students.

Enhanced practical science teaching

Dr Ali Zarbakhsh, a lecturer in Physical Chemistry from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences presented the work done on his project to enhance the teaching of practical skills. He started by describing the challenges in educating professional chemists, including the large number of laboratory hours required combined with the very practical matters of health and safety. This project employed two students from the School to create instructional videos for a number of labs, some examples can be viewed in the recording of his presentation. So far, the videos have received very positive feedback, both from students and from the lab demonstrators.

Dr Zarbakhsh’s presentation highlighted a number of interesting facts, some of which were echoed in other presentations:

• Being involved in a project of this kind is useful to students, not only financially, but in terms of other useful skills. Most of the projects at the event employed students who were from the department that the project was taking place in, allowing them to become more involved in the teaching in their department and learning both discipline specific and transferable skills
• Having an academic who is engaged in the project is vital to its success. All our presenters were fully involved in their projects.
• Considering sustainability is important. In Dr Zarbakhsh’s case, he has not managed to make all the videos he wanted to. The project has allowed him to make a start and has allowed him to demonstrate the effectiveness of what he is doing. He must now look for a way to continue what he has started.

Ready, steady…film!

Dr Elina Vilar, Spanish Language Instructor, from the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film presented the work done on her project to produce videos to help teach students how to make videos! Eli wanted her students to make videos as part of her teaching and assumed that this was a skill that many of her students would already have. She discovered, however, that this wasn’t the case and that they required help in putting together their videos. Gary Schwartz, a Learning Technologist in the E-Learning Unit with a specific focus on using video and multimedia, was able to provide some support however he couldn’t always be around. This project therefore aimed to create a variety of videos to teach the necessary video skills with the extra feature that these were then dubbed into spanish (a language that Gary doesn’t speak).

Panel discussion

Throughout the event, people had been able to post their questions via an online poll. The presenters gathered to provide their answers to those questions.

Further resources

The E-Learning Unit website has a section which provides more detailed information on the E-Learning Production Scheme including information on how to apply and links to descriptions of previous projects.

Information on the various technologies used in the projects can also be found on the E-Learning Unit website including our equipment loan service which provides access to hardware such as video cameras, microphones and laptops and software such as Camtasia and Articulate.