academic development and support

Investigating the usage of Labster and its future implications for industry and academia

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Staff leads: Dr Rana Khalife, Dr Chika Nweke

Student lead: Pierre Springuel

 

DEPARTMENT

Biochemical Engineering

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Research has shown that the potential skills gap in engineering, exacerbated by the pandemic, has started to show when graduates go out into engineering industries (Hou 2020). Final year students in the department have also expressed worries via personal tutoring sessions about how the gap in lab skills will impact their employability and this has also been discussed in staff meetings, together with resulting increased burden on careers support from the departmental careers liaison officer and the UCL Engineering Careers team. It is holistically believed that the outcome of this project should not only help current and former students but can also help to alleviate some of the pressures on staff and industry. In understanding the impact of Labster, a number of stakeholders will benefit. If proved successful, the tool can be applied to other modules in the department with minimal staff training, meaning that academic and teaching staff can use it to train UG, PGT and PGR students. The tool can also be used in the training of industrial delegates who receive training from our department via MBIs (Modular Training for the Bioprocess Industries). The results of this study may also highlight some limitations of the tool, which can be fed back to the company that designed Labster, who the UCL Digital Education team have built a relationship with.

 

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Have a good timetable for the project, make sure you would be able to give the survey/do workshop before term end. Even ask the students for feedback on the project.

Conversations4citizenship

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Kamille Beye

Stella Cheong

Rowena Palicious

Adam Peter Lang

 

DEPARTMENT

Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, IOE

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Conversations4Citizenship is an innovative, inclusive, international podcast capturing discussions and debates on a wide range of citizenship issues focusing on emergence from the COVID 19 pandemic. Re -imagining citizenship education for a better future in these troubling geo-political times. We look at topics large or small and try to tell stories that appeal to a wide range of students, academics and practitioners.

 

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Go for it!

Gamification of MBBS kidney/renal learning

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Staff lead: Tom Olney
Academic lead: Dr Ben Caplin
Student leads: Sharma Ganesananthan, Praoparn Asanitthong, Max Rees
DEPARTMENT
UCL Medical School
WHAT HAPPENED?
We have created a revision tool for renal medicine, part of the 4th year of the MBBS, helping to cover a range of learning objectives through a story built in Articulate Rise. The story is set in Costa Rica where there are a high number of cases of CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology) and follows a young farm worked called Carlos over a period of time. You take the role of a medical student on elective and have to answer various questions and quizzes to help test knowledge and keep it interactive. I had the idea for using CKDu, but the students and Dr Caplin put together the outline of a story and the students all worked together on creating the content, while I focused on ensuring consistency and interactivity, and Dr Caplin ensured it was academically correct. Feedback from a small focus group before release enjoyed going through it, found it more interesting than traditional methods, and felt it was a useful revision tool.

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

It’s a great opportunity to do something a bit different and have students and academics work together to create something that both meets academic standards, but also is interesting and will be used by students. The main advice I have is to try and complete it in a shorter period of time near the start of a term where students feel they have a bit more time, do this by having a clear plan of work to complete and deadlines. I did not do this and the project has stalled at various points as the students haven’t had time to work on it.

Study Skills for UCL Medical Students (Study Skills for UCLMS); identifying the need and how to meet it?

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Lead staff: Dr Emma Kelley, Dr Carys Phillips.
Lead students: Philip Marshall-Lockyer, Nicole Tay, Anais Deere, Dhivya Ilangovan.

DEPARTMENT

UCL Medical School

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

Study skills are understood to be key to medical education [1] and help shape students into effective learners both at medical school and beyond. A recently published article in RUMS review (medical student-led) raised the concern from medical students about the lack of Study Skills teaching available at UCLMS. Following this, ‘study skills clinics’ were offered to undergraduate medical students to discuss a specific study skill issue they were having for which there was a high uptake. The several recurring themes noted by the staff facilitating the clinic lead to two group forums being set up for students based on these themes where there were ongoing comments from students that there is a desire for further study skills support. As a result, it was essential that these concerns were investigated to improve students’ confidence with their study skills. Through focus groups and a questionnaire, we identified what study skills medical students at UCLMS felt they needed support with, how they would like it delivered and what resources the medical school could provide. We now hope to utilise this data to provide feedback on the state of study skills teaching and inform recommendations for improvement moving forward. Although we still have a lot of work ahead of us, we have high hopes for the future and are already in the process of creating a new Study Skills Moodle page to improve the accessibility of the resources available. [1] Dwarika-Bhagat N, Sa B, Majumder MAA. Does study skill matter? A descriptive study on undergraduate health profession students in the University of the West Indies. Education in Medicine Journal. 2017;9(2):27–40. https://doi.org/10.21315/eimj2017.9.2.3

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Setting informal deadlines for tasks to be completed is a great way of motivating yourself to keep on track, particularly when other commitments get in the way. It also means the rest of the team is more aware of how the project is progressing, even if they are not involved in every aspect of it, leading to greater coherence within the group. Therefore, it is also important to let your team know when you have other commitments to prioritise, so that such deadlines can be planned around this and nobody is left overloaded with work.

Career support for Undergraduates’ Engagement with Services (CUES) Study

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Staff lead: Dr Keri Wong

Student lead: Henry Wang

Support student: Chloe Wang

 

DEPARTMENT

Psychology and Human Development, IOE

 

WHAT HAPPENED?

The CUES project investigated undergraduates’ access to UCL’s careers support and development services. Low student engagement with careers workshops and appointments (18.1% and 10.2%, respectively) at the IOE relative to UCL (24.6% and 15.3%) in 2021 has fuelled our investigation into how BSc Psychology with Education undergraduates from the Department of Psychology and Human Development (IOE), are engaging with the career resources offered. In listening to student’s feedback, we hoped to co-design timely solutions to increase student engagement with departmental and UCL careers services. We captured student voices across year groups (year 1, 2, and 3) through online semi-structured focus groups of three students. We explored student’s understanding of employability with at least ten participants from each year group. Study results highlighted six reasons for low engagement with UCL career events; these are: 1) professionalism, 2) undergraduate stage of life, 3) interpersonal factor, 4) cultural factor, 5) personality, and 6) personal characteristics. Additionally, participants’ expectations of university career services were related to ways of introducing career support, individualised support, types of career events, and diverse support. Opinions differed for each year group. This study yielded in-depth, new perspectives on BSc Psychology with Education undergraduates’ ideas and demands for career support. Aligning career support resources more effectively with student needs – better student-staff partnership – will enhance student’s future access to UCL career services and, in turn, maximise students’ employability and overall university experience.

The link of CUES Study Results Highlights Video: https://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/46ebcE0F 

CUES Results Posters_Chloe Wang CUES Study Poster_Chloe Wang

 

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

– Always think about your potential stakeholders
– Always keep your supervisor updated about your project and communicate with others
– Always work as a team and try your best to stick to the timeline
– Think creatively about developing solutions for students and staff

BARC0132 Indeterminate structures – Developing student’s intuition on structural engineering

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Staff Lead and Module Coordinator: Fabio Freddi
Lead student: Marjorie Luque
Support students: Cying Wang, Max Ostroverhy

DEPARTMENT

Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering (CEGE)

WHAT HAPPENED?

This project aimed to offer academic support to students in order to improve their learning experience in relation to indeterminate structures, which involved topics that were typically perceived as complex. The main advantage of the project was the involvement of Y3 students, who having faced the same challenges the previous year, were able to understand where the difficulties might arise and based on that advise Y2 students. This also meant that Y2 students were exposed to a variety of teaching styles from a student perspective. Through these sessions which focused on practical work, Y2 students cleared out their doubts and could keep engaged in the module. Also, the cooperative environment created an effective communication channel between Y3 students, Y2 students, and teaching staff.

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

Considering the challenges I faced last year while undertaking the module, this project focused on developing the worked examples in a very detailed manner while including useful tips that could help students improve their understanding of the topics. In order to make the project successful, it was key to prepare the sessions in advance and to organise weekly meetings with the teaching staff.

Peer-led critical reading workshops

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment

THE TEAM

Staff: Dr Alex Elwick

Lead students: Mellissa Seow, Li Diya, Meichen Lu.

Support students: David Curtin, Lin Zilin, Monica Loa Romo, Kathryn O’Brien Skerry, Christina Pham.

DEPARTMENT

Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment , IOE

WHAT HAPPENED?

As masters level students, we’re all told that we must write critically. However, many international students who are not native English speakers struggle with even understanding some of the articles, so it’s harder for them to be able to respond critically to what they read! Our project was a peer-lead reading workshop, which offered a small and safe space where students could ask their peers for help in the essential readings of one of our core modules – What is Education (WIE). Peer tutors were selected from the Term 1 cohort of WIE students to assist students in the Term 2 cohort, where tutors could break down complex sentences, explain foreign concepts or impart strategies and tips for reading critically. Our project recruited 4 peer tutors and had 20 students sign up as tutees. It ran for three weeks in Term 2.

WHAT ADVICE OR ENCOURAGEMENT WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE THINKING OF DOING A CHANGEMAKERS PROJECT?

If your project satisfies a real need amongst students or staff, then it will be impactful! Don’t be afraid to ask questions and clarify. Whenever we had doubts, we would ask Dr Alex Elwick or each other – talking through our queries and doubts helped to refine the ideas of our final project. We also approached Dr Lesley Price from the AWC – looking at situating your project within the wider context of what’s already going on is a great way to ensure its success.

Masterclass series

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment
The team
Konstantina Tetorou, Nandaki Keshavan, Ellie Chilcott, Ashley Boyle, Juan Antinao, Riccardo Privolizzi, Tania Castillo.
Department
Institute for Women’s Health
What happened?
Our project aims to create a forum through which early career researchers of the Institute for Women’s Health (Masters, PhDs, PostDocs) could be trained in different lab techniques and provide structured, targeted feedback on ongoing research projects. We will organise two technical masterclasses, one poster session, one writing retreat session and one wellbeing session to take place in a 3-month period (April-June 2022). The technical masterclasses will include training in lab techniques that are commonly used across the Institute, such as ELISA and western blot. Also, peer to peer feedback will be given on general presentation skills.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
This is a great opportunity for engaging with the community and sharing the skillset within our institute. We advise seeking the opinion of the target attendees to determine what they think would be most useful to cover in events before applying. No idea is too small for this application as long as it is well planned and justified.

A manifest on ‘module design’; student edition

Fiona A Wilkie Leave a Comment
The team
Staff: Eleni Makrinou, Janice Kiugu
Students: Loris Marcel, Ronnie Alexander-Passe, Emma Pryke, Keerat Singh, Oliver Hood
Department

Structural and Molecular Biology

What happened?
Our project aims to offer an insight into the development of academic modules as shaped by the current pedagogical trends, while taking into account the students’ perspective. The objective is to improve and enhance the learning experience, considering current developments, emerging needs and job orientations, while giving at the same time students the opportunity to be heard and share the responsibility of shaping the future of the academic sector. Therefore, using as an exemplar a new year 3 module, on life in extreme environmental habitats that we plan to launch for the academic year 2023_24 we created a survey questionnaire that was disseminated in our Y2, Y3 and Y4 SMB students. A similar survey will be disseminated to the SMB teaching staff so that we can compare and reflect upon the views of both parties; our students and their lecturers. We wish to draw upon the expertise of teaching staff and the students’ perspective and create report based on a recommendation model of learning that become available at faculty level.
What advice or encouragement would you give to someone thinking of doing a ChangeMakers project?
Changemakers is a wonderful way to enhance partnership between students and staff. Make sure the participants have a vision and feel positive about bringing a change.