Each year, Sussex TEL makes available grants of up to £1000 to support the development of innovative practices in the use of technology within teaching and learning.

The TEL Innovation Scheme gives Sussex teaching staff the opportunity to develop or experiment with new tools, resources or teaching approaches with the potential to inform practice in their School or disciplinary area. This year, we received many great proposals with a wide-variety of innovative ideas for practice being put forward and, whilst we would have liked to have funded them all, the selection process forced us to whittle the applications down to the following four winners: 

The use of ‘SimMan 3G’ in Pharmacy Education

SimMan: a model patient

The School of Life Sciences has invested in a  life-size, computerised human patient simulator called the SimMan 3G for use on the new University of Sussex pharmacy course.

The SimMan (affectionately known as Simon or Simone, depending on the wig chosen) can be used for simulating clinical practice in a risk free, controlled environment which enables students to acquire the knowledge and understanding and enables them to practise and demonstrate clinical skills that underpin the safe use of medicines.

The aim of the TEL innovation project is to design case-based scenarios and associated trends for SimMan 3G use, using Articulate storyline 2 software and lecture capture, to create e-learning packages and online assessments to facilitate student learning.

Dr Denise Turner

Making the right connections’: Values and ethics in a digital world

Dr Denise Turner’s project will utilise creative methods to explore the ethical complexities of professional practice within an expanding digital landscape. Students will work with an artist to create outputs based around a scenario designed to encourage ethical debates. There will also be a podcasting workshop and a bespoke session with a criminal barrister focussed on the Court setting. Outputs from the project will include an ‘Ethics in Performance’ in conjunction with the Medical School and related content for the Social Work Dept. YouTube channel, which will also create a repository of material for future teaching.

E-Learning’ the Interprofessional Curriculum

Camtasia for building resources

Dr Sabita Menon is a Teaching Fellow in Physiology who has been tasked with creating effective Interprofessional learning opportunities between students of Pharmacy, Medicine (at BSMS), Social Work and Psychology.

This project will create a video-based e-learning resource, using Camtasia software, that will help lay the groundwork before students are offered face-to-face IPE sessions. To do this, Sabita will work with TEL to develop a web-based mini-module on IPE that will introduce learners to its underlying principles. Through engagement with this mini-module, students will develop enhanced understanding of roles and responsibilities of other health and social care professionals, respect and understand the roles of other professionals and develop improved knowledge of the nature of multidisciplinary teamwork.

Dr Tanja Staehler

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills for Philosophy Students

Dr Tanja Staehler’s project will attempt to counteract a low National Student Survey result in presenting ideas with confidence by creating a series of interactive educational films on Public Speaking and Presentation Skills for Arts and Humanities students.

The proposed films would consist of a series of mini lectures on Public Speaking that will explain the main mechanisms and ideas with the help of suitable examples. These mini lectures will be provided by Dr. Alexander Kozin who has taught Rhetorics and Public Speaking and will be interspersed by comments, examples and quizzes for students.

The students will be able to access the interactive videos through the University’s Virtual Learning Environment and will be interviewed about their experience after giving their final year seminar presentations.

We will keep you updated on the TEL projects through the blog throughout the year and, when completed, all of the projects results will be published on our webpages and presented at University of Sussex’s Mobile Technology Week in November 2016.