'Gamma Anna': a classroom demonstration for teaching the concepts of gamma imaging

Gamma imaging is at the interface of medicine and physics and thus its teaching is important in both fields. Pedagogic literature highlights the benefits of interactive demonstrations in teaching: an increase in enjoyment and interest, as well as improvement in academic achievement. However gamma imaging uses radioactive sources, which are potentially dangerous and thus their use is tightly controlled. We have developed a demonstration which uses a localised exothermic reaction within a rag doll as an analogue of radioactivity. This can be safely used in classrooms to demonstrate the principles of gamma imaging. The tool is easy to make, cheap, robust and portable. The supplementary material in this paper gives teacher notes and a description of how to make the rag doll demonstrator. We have tested the tool using six participants, acting as 'teachers', who carried out the demonstration and described the doll as easy to use, and the 'tumour' clearly identifiable. The teaching tool was separately demonstrated to a group of 12 GCSE physics students and a group of 12 medical students. Feedback showed increased student engagement, enjoyment and understanding of gamma imaging. Previous research has shown that these benefits have an impact on learning and academic outcomes

Co-ordinated Development Strengthens the Throughline in Connected Modules

Many degree programs teach core topics over several modules spanning 2 or 3 years (e.g. “Introduction” and “Advanced”). Even if “Introduction” is a pre-requisite for “Advanced”, students and staff may not fully recognise the connections between them. In addition, students often compartmentalise material and don’t apply it elsewhere. Student feedback can therefore lead staff to develop new resources and re-teach material. UCL’s Biomedical Engineering programmes include a theme of Medical Electronics that spans five modules across four years. Some modules are explicitly focused on medical instrumentation, others only partially. The teaching team has created a through-line of enquiry by explicitly discussing the links between the modules and collaboratively designing content (lectures and practicals), to emphasise connections. This reinforces the relevance of skills developed in the other modules. Re-teaching is replaced by referencing, specifically referring to previously taught material and shared resources. An additional level of complexity arises because some modules contribute to other degree programmes. By applying the same collaborative principles with staff on those programmes, we have been able to unify the experience across programmes and capitalise on the mixed cohorts to encourage student interactions across subjects and perspectives. Staff and students have commented positively on the benefits of the explicit connections between modules and we have seen an improved performance in a practical instrumentation project, relative to previous years. We will discuss the challenges, lessons learnt and examples of how student performance has improved as we iteratively develop the interconnected modules

Contextualizing the teaching and assessment of engineering skills

We are frequently being informed that Engineering graduates are not 'work ready', but lacking in a broad range of generic skills, despite these being mandatory for professional body accreditation. In this case study we present a newly developed second year undergraduate module which explicitly integrates the practice and assessment of generic skills with realistic technical challenges in 'scenarios' (week long intensive group projects). It is intended that this format would demonstrate the relevance of the generic skills to the students and hence improve engagement and learning. Observations by staff and feedback from students confirmed the success of this approach

Improving students' critical thinking and communication skills

University engineering faculties, professional engineering institutions and industry increasingly recognize that higher education should support students to develop key professional skills such as critical thinking and communication skills. This paper examines three activities aimed at teaching these skills, i.e. practical open-ended group activities; discussion with experts or as experts; and peer assessment. These methods were assessed in terms of student and staff opinions, but also practicality. Our research indicates that it is beneficial to integrate and balance these three types of activities within engineering degrees as they complement each other. Our findings and conclusions can be applicable to any engineering degree, whether the aim is to incorporate the teaching of these skills in a small activity within a module or a full programme of studies

Connecting staff expectations and student understanding of professional engineering skills in a multidisciplinary design challenge

This paper discusses the evolution of an active learning assignment [1] for second year undergraduate biomedical engineers. An arc of assignments throughout the first two years of their study supports their understanding of the design cycle and aids in assimilation of material taught in lectures and more structured laboratory workshops [2]. The assignment - to create an item of 'smart' clothing for an athlete - was primarily designed to reinforce student learning in the areas of physiological monitoring through transducers, basic electronics and Arduino programming. A misalignment was observed between teaching staff's preconceptions of students' skills and knowledge, and the experience that the students actually bring to the assignment which influences how they approach the work, echoing the concept of the hidden curriculum [3]. This led to the team aiming to improve support of students' skills in debugging, their awareness of laboratory health and safety and links between different strands of their education through pre-assignment material, changes in teaching vocabulary and small changes in assessment. The impact of the changes has been evaluated through teaching team discussions and analysis ofshort pieces of individual reflective writing done by every student as part of their assessment before and after the material's introduction