The Educational Technology Team work together with academic staff and Educational Specialists to produce high quality learning resources for blended and self-directed learning. These include thought-provoking self-tests, animations, video-based case studies and cutting edge communication technologies.

Supporting the online curriculum:

The Team offer essential support and advice to all teaching staff on the MBChB, GEC, BMedSc, Nursing and Physiotherapy undergraduate courses, and all other taught postgraduate courses. The support provided includes instruction into the use of web technologies and software, student and staff induction training, uploading lecture notes, and creating new resources.

Web 2.0 Technologies:

We use expertise in WebCT2.0 technologies, such as social networking, mobile and file sharing, to create innovative learning solutions for students. The Team also provide training courses for staff.

Inter-professional education and Clinical Pathways:

The Team have created a content management system and web portal for regional inter-professional partners. This portal provides teaching resources to many health-related courses in the region, including pathways, clinical simulations, plenary day resources and further inter-professional information. The Team are also responsible for producing a range of online clinical "pathways" containing video content, related activities and a combination of formative and summative assessment.

Reflective learning using ePortfolios:

An ePortfolio system has been introduced by the Educational Technology Team to encourage students to become more reflective about their learning. The aim is to produce a secure web-based application which offers students the opportunity for private and facilitated reflection on all aspects of their studies and self-development, and for them to receive regular feedback on their progress from academic mentors.

Live lecture recording:

Live Event Recording: The Team have led the introduction of Echo360 into mainstream teaching across the College and are prominent in planning the rollout of the technology across the University. This is available to all teaching staff in the lecture theatres of the Medical School and through the use of loanable laptops elsewhere.

Online Learning Activities:

The Team create a wide variety of custom websites for academic and clinical staff to support their teaching. These often include rich media learning activites, questionsets and opportunties for reflection and feedback.

The Team has created an essential student portal in recent years which offers over 30 applications to students and administrators on the MBChB, BMedSc and Physician Assistant programmes. The Team are now involved in the REAMS project to review the overlap of this system with BIRMS processes and seek to engineering the best possible portal environment for our College students and administrators.

Several of the applications included in the system are described here:

Student Attendance and Timetabling:

An attendance monitoring system has been developed to record all attendance at 5000 non-clinical teaching, Community Based Medicine and SGT sessions. Clinical teaching attendance can also be recorded by undergraduate coordinators. In addition, students may also register their absence and view their absence history for the duration of their time at the Medical School.

Module evaluations:

Module evaluations are now being piloted across Year 5 MBChB modules. These offer students a simple standardised web form for submitting their responses. Staff can freely manage their evaluation forms, create new ones, and generate reports to curriculum groups, clinical sub deans and GP practices.

Student placements:

A system has been created to allow all students access to their placement information for the academic year; they are also able to view names of students also on the same placement at that time. The staff view of the data shows photographs of all students categorised by Trust, rotation subject and time period.

Student sign-ups:

Large cohort numbers (350 – 400) require a significant amount of effort to coordinate when offering students a range of choice; for example: MTAS registration; SSM's; Code of Conduct; SSA selections; Criminal Records meetings. A generic sign-up resource is therefore being developed to allow School office staff the ability to create a sign up themselves and publicise it to students.

Student records:

administrators are now able to lookup key data and statistics on all MBChB students in the intraMED portal for the past 3 years across all the applications available, These include those listed here as well as exam results, code of conduct and assignment submissions.

Clinical skills passport:

Over 18 different clinical skills are available for students in MBChB Years 3-5 to submit evidence for their observed practice and simulated practice in the Trusts. For the latter, undergraduate coordinators also validate the entries to provide corroborative evidence from the clinical leads.

We have created a number of sophisticated information systems for staff to support data management and warehousing. These applications are available through our intraMED portal. Example applications include:

• Committees - management of committee members, papers and meetings;
• Message Board - publishing tool for the School message boards;
• AV1 Tracker - a post tracking system for HR, Finance and College administrators;
• Research Grants - an application and validation system for all College researchers;
• Interactive Document Repository - a document storage, validation and tracking system;
• Fixed Term Contracts - short term contract tracking and notification system.

In addition to providing support and advice to colleagues across the College through induction programmes, staff training, and lunchtime demonstrations, the Team is also responsible for promoting the use of best practice methods in education. The aim is to increase the quality of service and academic experience for students in all programmes delivered in the College.

The Team work closely with the Communications and Marketing Manager to enhance the quality and relevance of these College web pages (http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/mds). The pages contain information for prospective students, research opportunities, news, events, and general information about the College.

The Team have created a number of application with the Research Team in the College to assist research staff. The applications have the potential to add great value to the staff and improve communication within the research community. The Team continues to receive numerous requests from individual researchers for small websites or applications, or from the Research Team for larger scale applications.

Example work areas:

• Research Grants
• Research Forum
• Technology Hub
• Postdoctoral Staff Network
• Patient Information for Genetic Tests in Oncology
• Various web forms for patient trials

The blend of skills in the Team (technical, web, content editing, graphic design, instructional design) have been valuable in supporting other members of the College in creating publicity literature, recording and publishing inaugural lectures, and creating conference web sites.

The Team is frequently engaged in creating new learning resources, websites and applications for externally funded projects. Such projects include: Patient Pathways, a Familial Cancer website, a History of Medicine archive.

Critical to the role of the web development units across the College is the need to research and test new tools, technologies, approaches and solutions. Web professionals are continuously learning these new methods and applying them in their education and administrative applications, such as e-portfolios, lecture recording (Echo360) and Magscope (Dentistry). This work is often used as the background to further academic research involving web professionals themselves, in the form of published work and conference presentations.