Project Title: Facilitating online workshops for large cohorts, featuring Nearpod and Thinglink

Project partners: Mylinh Nguyen (Senior Lecturer and Inclusive Practice Lead, School of Art and Media) and Amy Gills (BA Hons Animation)

Within the School of Art and Media, the Business Studies modules are taught across three courses: Fashion, Textiles and Fashion Communication. With growing student numbers and a limited staff team the Business Studies team has had to re-think our approach to providing online teaching materials that are both informative and stimulating for students for them to gain a deeper understanding of how to conduct relevant business research. Currently there are 134 students enrolled on the L4 Business Studies module.

Mylinh: “In participating in the Digital Learning Partnership, I was partnered with Amy Gills, a L4 BA Hons Animation student. This partnership enabled me to gain student perspective into co-producing engaging digital teaching materials that can be used in the next academic year. Through the partnership we were able to explore different digital teaching platforms which could be used to present information to the students that is interactive and accessible.

Previously I had used Nearpod for teaching in-person and remotely. As a digital teaching tool, it was used as an extension to a PowerPoint presentation, with the addition of adding in activities, such as quizzes that allowed for student participation. However, it felt limited and did not allow students to delve in deeper to gain further knowledge.”

From having a meeting with Fiona Handley (Learning and Teaching Hub) and Rob Englebright (Learning Technologist), project partners discussed various digital teaching platforms that would be suitable for our aim. A platform which stood out for us is Thinglink, as it allowed us to create digital teaching material that was both visual and provide more accessible spaces. Through meetings both in-person and online using Teams, we created a flow chart using Whiteboard to map out how the workshop would be devised. With Amy’s animation background, they were able to translate my teaching materials to information that was more relatable and was able to use themselves as the case study.

Thinglink contains ‘tags’ that allow the user to click through to gather further information on the subject matter. You were able to pose questions and include videos to allow more interactivity and connection between the creator and user. It also allowed the user to view the material at their own pace.

The outcome from this project has allowed us to provide rich and engaging digital teaching materials to complement lectures that can be used when teaching to a large cohort.

For more information about this project, contact Mylinh Nguyen – M.Nguyen2@brighton.ac.uk