Blending your teaching: creative, playful and innovative approaches to teaching

Blending your teaching: creative, playful and innovative approaches to teaching

Wednesday 21 March 2018 (TOMORROW)
13:30-14:30
Room 601, Watts Building, Moulsecoomb, University of Brighton

This session explores some engaging ways of increasing student learning through planning sessions around 15-20 minute blocks, and managing activities such as modelling with Lego, using Kahoot! on mobile devices, and exploring 3D objects and environments using Google Cardboard and Nearpod. Whether preparing for seminars, small group teaching or large lectures there will be some ideas for you.

Please click here if you would like to attend (open to anyone with a BSMS or University of Brighton IT account/contract)

Details of all training and development opportunities offered by the Centre for Learning and Teaching can viewed on our website. To access please click here.


If you are interested but can’t make it, drop me a comment below and we can explore putting on a specific one for BSMS educators.

Quizlet – a great free tool for students to learn and test their knowledge of your topic

Testing your knowledge with quizzes is an established method and teachers are increasingly looking for ways to provide this for their students outside the classroom. There are a growing number of online tools that offer the means to do this and I’m going to focus on Quizlet because I think it can offer some genuine teaching benefit for the following reasons:

It is free to use – you can sign up and use the majority of the features for free. There is a Teacher paid-for version (£3/mo) which offers progress tracking, creation of specific classes, and others but all the core features for learners are there.

Use existing quizzes – search for and use thousands of existing quizzes. You don’t need to create anything if you don’t want to! Or you can take a copy and adapt an existing quiz to tailor it to your needs.

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Postcards from Helsinki: Top tips from the AMEE med ed conference

Click on this icon to go to the conference information

BSMS had the highest representation yet at AMEE 2017 – one of the largest international conferences in medical education. Ten of us joined almost 4000 other educators in Helsinki to present papers and posters on our research, and run a popular conference workshop “Technology Enhanced Learning… For Dummies!”. There was much to learn but here are some personal take-home reflections:

Dr Claire Smith
  • I was struck by the diversity of experiences across the world, yet also by the similarities of issues facing HEIs
  • There exists such a position as Director of Virtual Human Anatomy rather than ‘Head of Anatomy’ – could I be virtual?!
  • Also noticed the friendless of everyone and the ease of talking to new people
  • Top Tip: Get to session rooms early to get a seat – for many sessions I sat on the floor!
  • Presenting at an international conference with colleagues from so many countries made me focus on ensuring my poster presentation was accessible those for whom English is not their first language. However, I was deeply impressed by how many people spoke flawless medical English when this wasn’t their first language!
  • Attending a debate on the necessity of human cadaveric dissection in teaching anatomy teaching encouraged me to reflect on how much of what we teach is because ‘that’s just the way that it is done’ – we need to question the status quo and keep pushing the boundaries of educational practice.
  • There is much value in the time spent having informal discussions with colleagues over the local brew!

Dr Nikki Dearnley

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