Project Title: Development of a Digital Video Technique within a Student-led E-Learning System
Project Leader(s): Nigel Mountney and Stuart Egan
This project aims to develop a learning and teaching system that employs the medium of digital video in order to demonstrate the behaviour of various natural physical processes that have hitherto been difficult to describe and explain using more traditional teaching methods. At the heart of the proposed learning facility will be a database of video clips that will provide students with a dynamic, exciting and innovative learning experience. These will be integrated within an interactive, student-driven learning environment through the development of a dedicated, web-based front-end interface, interactive aspects of which will be further developed using the Java Applets – a programming tool used for the development of dynamic html systems. These resources will be presented as a series of e-learning practical exercises designed to develop independent learning skills in students, especially those operating in large teaching group settings.A fundamental objective of this project will be to shoot, collate and edit a series of video clips that portray earth science and geographical phenomena and to integrate them with a variety of other digital media types including photos, animations and computer model simulations in order to produce a dynamic and innovative set of graphical learning resources. Implicit in this process will be the distillation of ‘raw’ data into a refined and integrated end-product designed specifically to help understand complex dynamic processes and to help students solve 3D problems that are common in branches of earth sciences such as stratigraphy. The video footage and related resources will be delivered as a series of practical-based exercises. Resource delivery will be undertaken by academic staff in lectures or in practical classes, or may be initiated by students via download from an intranet (Fig. 1), Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or through use of menu-driven interactive DVD video disks (Fig. 2). A further objective of this project will be to encourage students to make use of digital video recording equipment within a series of physical experiments conducted during practical laboratory classes in order to record results that would otherwise not be discernable from standard observations.
The past three years have seen a revolution in semi-professional digital video editing, mainly because digital video cameras have become affordable and desktop PC’s have become sufficiently powerful to be able to capture and edit digital video footage at near broadcast quality. Only now are the capabilities of this exciting new medium starting to be employed within taught courses to enhance the student learning experience. The power of digital video lies in the ability to precisely edit footage and mix video with still images, captions, audio overdubs, computer simulations and virtually any other type of digital media. This allows difficult concepts to be explained and illustrated in a manner that has hitherto not been possible.
Project Title: Clinical Case-based Simulator
Project Leader(s): Colin Melville and Douglas Quinney
The aim of this proposal is to promote clinical by ensuring adequate coverage of core material. The limited duration and opportunistic nature of current practice makes this challenging. This proposal outlines the development of core clinical cases to assist the learner to develop clear archetypes of typical cases which will be delivered through IT using existing software, though the platform may need modifications to deliver some of the materials suggested below.Software has already been developed to allow mathematicians to generate vast numbers of mathematical problems for learners to practice on. From what is known about brain function at the level of cognitive neuroscience, in particular the structure of the brain as a massively parallel-processing neural network, it is essential that learners are exposed to multiple examples to develop these clear archetypes. This software also gives specific, instantaneous feedback and explanations to students.
To our knowledge such software has not been used extensively in the medical field. Our proposal is therefore to generate randomly variation in cases within plausible limits, so that learners are presented with a case spectrum similar to that seen in clinical practice.
The importance of formative assessment is clear from many publications. It influences student motivation, identifies a starting place for instruction, clarifies learning goals, influences students learning strategies and skills, their ability to retain and apply learning and their self-perception concerning self-efficacy, and describes student achievements.
Assessment enhances learning if it encourages intrinsic motivation, builds confidence, gives a sense of ownership and control, provides detailed feedback, enhances strategic awareness, and encourages collaboration between students. Of particular importance is feedback, which should be specific, rapid and communicate clear and high expectations of students.
Our hypothesis is that provision of such a facility for students should result in a rapid measurable improvement in diagnostic skills for specific knowledge domains. The effectiveness of the resource will be evaluated carefully in a pilot group of students. This strategy may well be of interest to others at Keele who wish to integrate IT into their own teaching and learning programmes as the university moves towards a VLE.
Clinical Case-based Simulator by Colin Melville and Douglas Quinney, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
