e-Media Blog

New projects at the RVC

2011-12-08T09:23:00.001-08:00

Over the past month we have had two significant successes with funding from JISC - at a time when funding is particularly hard to find. These will enable to continue to develop our innovative projects working on Open Educational Resources, WikiVet and commercial publishers.

Online Veterinary Anatomy Museum
The JISC Content Programme has provided over £ 130,000 to develop an Online Veterinary Anatomy Museum(OVAM). The project will provide access to a comprehensive set of veterinary anatomical resources which will be presented in an intuitive virtual environment. All the UK veterinary schools have already committed to contribute materials as well as vet schools in Ireland, Spain and Australia. In addition, other partners including Elsevier, Mansons and Morpho Vet Imaging have agreed to provide content for the museum.

The museum will contain a wide range of digital exhibits provided by the partners including e-books, anatomical videos, potcasts, powerpoints, slides, assessments and images (pictured right is a 3D Image of Foal with Mandibular Tumour, courtesy of Morpho Vet Imaging, Belgium). These will be shared under a Creative Commons licence as Open Educational Resources meaning that they will be freely available. The intention is to categorise all these items in a way that they can be virtually displayed in “collections” and “themes” depending on where in the curriculum they will be used. The project has funding for each of the partner schools to employ students as virtual curators to help tag and build these collections.

For more information about the project visit : http://en.wikivet.net/OVAM

PublishOER - Developing new models for Online Publishing

This project is led by the Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry & Veterinary Medicine at the University of Newcastle and will develop new ways of augmenting the open educational resources (OER) ‘pool’ with high quality published content by investigating new business models for embedding published works in OER. It is a partnership of organisations including Elsevier, JISC Collections, Rightscom (with links to all publishers) and education providers particularly the RVC. It will survey stakeholders in the context of advancing academic publishing in challenging times (responding to changes in UK further and higher education), test models of working through a significant case study in veterinary medicine and explore the potential for mutually beneficial national licence agreements. It will investigate alternative, flexible ways of raising income while augmenting existing resources with weblogs, reviews, comments and ratings from users, and ways of incorporating published works into OER, ensuring staff and students are operating within best practice, accrediting, attributing and paying (when necessary) for using commercially published material in sharable resources.

For more information about the project visit : http://en.wikivet.net/PublishOER

Development of a Virtual Anatomy Museum

2011-10-30T00:26:00.000-07:00

The Online Veterinary Anatomy Museum (OVAM) will provide access to a comprehensive and pedagogically structured set of veterinary anatomical resources from UK veterinary schools and other institutions. These will be aggregated and ordered in an environment which will make them easily discoverable by different cohorts of learners. Key to the success of this project will be the development of effective methodologies to embed and integrate these materials within a traditional curriculum to maximise exposure, uptake and sustainability.

More information at : OVAM web site

Presentation at Nottingham Vet Education Symposium 13th July 2011

2011-07-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

Embedding WikiVet in the curriculum

View more presentations from nshort1

Presentation at e-Health Conference 28th June 2011

2011-06-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

E health presentation 28th june 2011

The presentation will examine a collaborative model for sharing OERs between veterinary schools through a wiki. The session will describe the lessons learnt from the JISC funded Opening Veterinary Access to Literature (OVAL) project. This is intended to trigger discussion as to how academic institutions can collaborate effectively with commercial publishers in the development of free to access learning resources.
The intended learning outcomes include an appreciation of the issues involved in sharing OERs and the application of the MEDEV OOER toolkit to support this process. More specifically, the session will discuss how OERs can be adapted from existing published texts to generate educationally valuable, quality resources which are open access.
The WikiVet project has now been running for a 4 year period. In that time over 10,000 individuals have registered with the site representing over 198 veterinary schools from 68 countries. The presentation will explain how the WikiVet environment has assisted in the publishing of OERs in an accessible format. A comparison will be made with other approaches to repositories for OERs including JORUM and the case will be made for new thinking on the most effective publishing models for the future.
The relevance of this session to the wider healthcare community includes exposure to new working practices which help address current shortfalls in funding for resource development. This will include developing business models which facilitate collaboration between corporate partners and academia with benefits for both.
To date review and evaluation of the project has been limited to feedback from small focus groups and statistical review of site usage. The session will explore ways that these OER initiatives can improve feedback and evaluation in order to better focus provision on the needs of an international audience.
Further information on WikiVet and the OVAL project can be found at http://en.wikivet.net/OVAL. A compilation of key blogs relating to OERs is available on the MEDEV site at http://goo.gl/T4Zwe.

References:
Scase, T., Brown, G., Cox, B., Short, N., Smith, K., Whittlestone, K., Hammond, R. and Rhind, S. (2008) 'The WikiVet community of practice', The Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine Newsletter 01, no. 17, Autumn 2008 pp. 15-16. ISSN 1740-8768 Also available online at:http://www.medev.ac.uk/newsletter/01.17/ accessed [5 May 2011], ISSN 1479-523X.
Brown, G., Quentin-Baxter, M. and Belshaw, Z. (2010) ‘WikiVet: building a community of practice to support a self-sustaining wiki for veterinary education’, Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.183–196.

Bloomsbury Media Cloud

2011-05-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

Launch Event, Friday 20th May

In January 2010, JISC awarded the Bloomsbury Colleges £90,000 to deliver a project - the Bloomsbury Media Cloud, which builds upon their portfolio of shared licenses and collaborative approaches to supporting learning, teaching and research. The project, running in partnership with the London International Development Centre (LIDC) aimed to establish a shared media platform across the Colleges to create a consortium site with a focus on issues relating to international development.

This is the official launch of the new media platform - please contact ssherman@rvc.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

Agenda:
1300 Lunch
1400 Welcome (Sarah Sherman, Project Manager)
1410 Keynote Presentation: Richard Jacobs (Director of Business Development, MGt plc & PayWizard plc)
1440 Bloomsbury’s International Profile (Nick Short, Project Director)
1450 The Bloomsbury Media Cloud (Neal MacInnes, Media Officer)
1510 Developing an Open Source Media Platform (Stuart Bowness, Director: MediaCore)
1530 Break
1545 Cloud Computing and JISC (Alex Hawker, Programme Manager: JISC)
1605 e-Copyright and Digital Performance Rights (Zak Mensah, e-Learning Officer: JISC Digital Media)
1630 Drinks Reception

The Hash-tag for the event is #BLEcloud

WikiVet goes mutilingual

2011-04-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

It is now possible to translate content on a WikiVet page into another language!

An extension has been installed into WikiVet after testing, you may have noticed a new tab for 'translate' on the left side of the screen in WikiVet. This enables you to select another language to view content in. The current languages that are available are Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Find out more....

WikiVet gets new funding from JISC

2011-03-08T03:03:00.000-08:00

The WikiVet project has just received £ 100,000 to support a new initiative to publish commercial content on the site. The Opening Veterinary Access to Literature (OVAL) project involves the repackaging of currently restricted-view veterinary educational resources into an open format, which will then be made freely accessible to an international audience of veterinary online learners.

Veterinary students and graduates have become increasingly confident in using web based resources to supplement or replace traditional approaches to learning. Whilst the convenience of e-learning has obvious attraction, there are also concerns with the academic quality of online information and how to search for it amongst the numerous other less reliable sources. The OVAL project will help to address these issues by adapting quality peer reviewed articles and datasheets provided by our commercial partners and integrating these in to the widely used WikiVet veterinary educational portal.

Currently, there is an extensive range of veterinary literature produced by private sector publishers which has a limited readership due to the prohibitive costs. However, with the significant market changes associated with e-publishing, there is now a good business case for making some of these resources free to view. The OVAL project intends to use this opportunity to develop an innovative model for repurposing online journals and text books as Open Educational Resources (OER).

Bloomsbury Media Cloud

2010-11-25T03:32:00.001-08:00

A joint Bloomsbury initiative to create a "Cloud" based media resource funded by JISC.

Example videos:

New panoramas of RVC facilities

2010-11-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

We are currently developing a series of 180° and 360° panoramas featuring some of the exciting new buildings and recent redevelopment projects at our Hawkshead and Camden Campuses. These are based on up 50 high quality digital images which are stitched together and then rendered into a panorama on a Mac in a Quicktime format. This enables the viewer to pan around the scene and zoom in on specific parts of the image.

Link to panoramas

Learning from Stubbs

2010-08-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

The engraving accessible from the link below is taken from one of the earliest veterinary anatomy textbooks in the world. The Anatomy of the Horse by George Stubbs was published in 1766 in London. To complete the book, Stubbs first spent 18 months dissecting horses and then drawing the dissections in meticulous detail. This work is said to have been the inspiration behind many of his subsequent paintings of horses - included one of the famous racehorse Eclipse which is now on display in the RVC library.

The animation is based on a scanned image of the original illustration. Interactive labels have then been added using a program called Dragster (http://www.webducate.net/). This provides a fascinating example of both the similarities and the differences in the ways that anatomy was taught at the RVC in the 18th century as compared to the modern day.

Link to Stubbs Animation

Vet Record Article on Learning to Learn Online

2010-07-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Online resources are playing an increasingly important role in veterinary undergraduate education and lifelong learning. The challenge is to know where to search for useful, authoritative and comprehensive information without wasting time aimlessly browsing the web. Nick Short, head of the e-Media Unit at the Royal Veterinary College, gives a brief overview of some of the sites available.

Click here for full article

New program on testing the functional integrity of ocular reflexes

2010-07-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

The e-Media Unit has been working with Dr Raymond Macharia to design a Flash animation in which a virtual patient is provided to test pupillary (consensual) light reflex, palpebral and corneal reflexes as well as the testing nervous control of extra-ocular muscles of the eye. It is hoped that the use of a virtual patient will provide a safe way to observe and practice on a wide range of nerve or ocular deficits and also receive informative feedback.

The eye receives sensory and motor innervations to its extrinsic and intrinsic tissues through cranial nerves and the sympathetic trunk. The optic nerve is specific for vision while other ocular and extra-ocular structures transmit sensory modalities such as pain and pressure to the brain through the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve. Motor responses to sensory inputs are provided through the facial nerve, oculomotor, trochler and abduscent nerve. In addition the sympathetic trunk through the cranial cervical ganglia (CCG) supplies parasympathetic innervation to the ciliary muscles and glands around the eyeball.

Web site link

Echo 360 at the RVC

2010-05-21T08:59:00.001-07:00

The Royal Veterinary College has recently adopted Echo 360 to record and publish all its lectures. Each lecture theatre has its own dedicated mixing box which combines digital feeds from the screen (eg Powerpoint or video) with the audio or video recording of the lecturer. The resulting streaming video is automatically load onto a server and linked in to the relevant course on Blackboard at the end of each lecture.

You can view an example video here of a lecture by Professor Katarina Staerk..

The RVC works closely with the other Bloomsbury Colleges (SOAS, IoE, LSHTM, Birkbeck and SoP) on the Bloomsbury Learning Environment. As part of this collaboration the Colleges have a shared services policy which includes sharing costs such as the Echo 360 licence and joint training. There is an example a training video on using Echo 360 here.

The RVC also leads a JISC funded shared services and cloud project called the Bloomsbury Media Cloud. More details about this initiative can be found here.

Digital slide box

2010-03-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

The RVC has purchased the SlidePath digital image software. This enables microscope slides that have been scanned at a very high resolution to be accessed through a web browser. These can then be viewed at different resolutions and interactive questions added. Some examples of images currently available through the Review site include:


	Mouse tongue Longitudinal section through body and root of tongue including some laryngeal cartilage. Shows serous secretory units in body of tongue and mucous secretory units in root of tongue Static image of mouse tongue Interactive image of mouse tongue
	Rat trachea, oesophagus and thyroid Transverse section through neck Static image of rat trachea, oesophagus and thyroid Interactive image of rat trachea, oesophagus and thyroid
	Multiocular or brown fat Rat fat Static image of multiocular or brown fat Interactive image of multiocular or brown fat

Interactive Canine Radiographs

2010-02-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

The teaching of anatomy at veterinary school usually takes place in the first 2 years of the course. This fits well with the general introduction to the basic sciences which is the first step in understanding the study of the normal animal before we move to teach about the abnormal. However, this often presents a problem where students loose sight of the relevance or significance of structure and function to their long term interest in becoming veterinary surgeons. The problem is compounded when student reach the clinical years of the course and have forgotten all their basic anatomy which should underpin everything they learn about surgery and medicine.

In an attempt to address this dichotomy, we have been exploring ways that we can use technology to bridge this divide. One development which has proved really effective has been the "interactive canine radiograph". This marries hundreds of annotated images taken from dissected specimens with high quality radiographs captured in the RVC hospitals. By clicking through interactive skeletal maps, students can find any bone or joint in the dog and then compare the key anatomical features with their radiographic equivalent.

One of the great features of this program is that it has all been developed by young vet graduates and students who know how they like to learn anatomy. On their own initiative, they have incorporated all the images into a sophisticated web of Powerpoint slides - over 40Mb is total size! These can be accessed through the web, virtual learning environment or on touch screen PCs in the anatomy museum. Perhaps most elegant of all, the Powerpoint format means that students can copy individual slides or images to their desktop whilst we can add an update the program at any time without major additional programming.

You can download a copy of the progam from our e-Media Showcase - it is a Creative Commons resource so free for educational use.

Access the e-Media Showcase

Mobile Phones in East Africa

2010-01-19T02:00:00.001-08:00

The e-Media Unit is involved in a new initiative to develop mobile phone platforms for use in East Africa. This work has been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and includes the development of disease surveillance tools running on Android based mobile phones and the creation of educational content which can be accessed on the phone itself. This work is being carried out in partnership with Imperial College, the London Knowledge Lab, the London International Development Centre and the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance.

You can find out more about the project on the Androids in Africa blog.

RVC Development Education Initiative

2009-11-16T05:25:00.000-08:00

The RVC e-Media Unit has been collaborating with a number of partners in East Africa including the University of Nairobi Veterinary School, the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance in Tanzania and the NGO Vetaid. This initiative draws upon these existing partnerships in order to strengthen North – South linkages and help to raise awareness amongst veterinary students in both the UK and Kenya of international issues of mutual concern. The importance of this approach was highlighted by the OIE at a major conference in October 2009 entitled evolving veterinary education for a safer world.

The RVC is a partner in the 3 year DFID funded “Students as Global Citizens” project led by the Development Education Research Centre in the Institute of Education. It has recently secured funding from DFID’s Development Awareness Fund to develop and evaluate methods to embed development education principles within degree courses on pharmacy, veterinary science, and human health. The initiative described here is part of this approach which is intended to introduce a series of scenario based directed learning sessions into the Year 2 veterinary curriculum.

The project aims to enhance the appreciation of international development by exploring and contrasting issues related to livestock and health in both East Africa and the UK. This is intended to assist RVC and Kenyan veterinary students identify with their counterparts and emphasize the common professional interests and values that exist. This will be achieved through a number of steps described below which integrate some of the latest technologies such as videocasting with more traditional students exchanges.

• An initial exploratory visit by RVC recent graduate to Kenya and Tanzania in November 2009. The UK vet will work with a recent veterinary graduate from the Nairobi veterinary school to develop links with the veterinary school and Vetaid;
• In particular they will work with Vetaid vets, community animal health workers and students to record and publish a series of audio and videocasts describing issues of local and national relevance;
• Adaption of video material collected in the field to create a series of 6 directed learning sessions for the RVC Development Awareness session for second year veterinary students in 2010, drawing parallels and comparisons between veterinary practice in the UK and in the developing world;
• To provide recording equipment, training and support for Kenyan vets to record, edit and publish their own podcasts and videocasts on topics of local relevance. As part of this initiative, a Kenyan veterinary graduate will make a two week visit to the Royal Veterinary College in London, in order to develop their technical skills and record videocasts of relevant livestock health issues in the UK;
• To establish a protocol for future student educational exchanges including the potential for RVC students to undertake either preclinical or clinical Extra Mural Studies placements with Vetaid and other partners in East Africa.

The first stage of the project involve a 4 week visit by a recent RVC graduate, Beverley Panto to East Africa. You can follow her progress through her own blog at : http://www.africabev.blogspot.com/

Wiki Quiz goes live

2009-11-13T02:45:00.000-08:00

After months of hard work, we now have an exciting new addition to the WikiVet site called WikiQuiz.

WikiQuiz is a directory of multiple choice quizzes on a wide range of veterinary topics, which are integrated within the existing Wikivet content. These quizzes cover all levels of the veterinary course and can be used as a self assessment resource for users who want to test their knowledge of a particular topic or as a revision tool. Each question incorporates feedback on the correct and incorrect answers and links to articles with further information on that topic. Most importantly, every question has been reviewed and approved by a relevant expert, to ensure the highest level of quality assurance across the quiz.

WikiQuiz, which now has a link on the http://www.wikivet.net home page is the result of collaboration between students, graduates and academics from four UK vet schools, and has been supported with funding from the RCVS Trust. We currently have over 30 live quizzes, with work ongoing on a further 30 which will be uploaded over the next few months. It is hoped that this will be a widely used and ever increasing resource for veterinary students worldwide, and would like to thank all the students, practitioners and staff who have contributed to the development of WikiQuiz.

Article in ALT Newsletter about WikiVet

2009-10-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

The latest ALT Newsletter contains an article by Bev Panto, a recent RVC graduate. Bev has been working on the WikiTest initiative funded by the RCVS Trust. Read the full article here.

New Pots at AMEE

2009-09-03T00:43:00.001-07:00

Just back from the AMEE 2009 Conference in Malaga. If you did not get a chance to go, it is worth reviewing the archived video presentations from previous years - check out Marc Prensky in Trondheim - you will need to register for the site but well worthwhile!

The e-Media Unit presented two short communications. Chris Trace, a recent RVC greaduate, gave an excellent overview of the e-Case system he has developed to create flash based cases authored by students. Nick Short talked about engaging students in developing e-learning content for example with the Wiki Vet development. He half suceeded in setting up a live Skype link to students in the UK - the video was great but the technical support were not able to set up the audio...... shame. Copies of the presentations can be found on the RVC web site.

There was the annual meeting of VIEW including a fascinating workshop on Professionalism organised by:

Liz Mossop (University of Nottingham, UK)
Sarah Baillie (Royal Veterinary College, UK)
Michèle Doucet (University of Montreal, Canada)
Gill McConnell (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Esther de Groot (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands)

The EU has just agreed to fund an ambitious new e-learning project led by Utrecht and including Hannover, RVC, Budapest and Bucharest veterinary schools - more on this later.

Finally it was really rewarding to see the anatomy potcasting model developed at the RVC has now been adopted by the University fo St Andrews Bute medical school. They gave a presentation at the conference in which they demonstrated how effective the technique has proved for medics too.

APT STAIRS Project

2009-05-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

The APT STAIRS Project is a JISC funded project led by the RVC and involving all 6 Bloomsbury Colleges. The first phase of the project has now been successfully completed and you can read about the outcomes and achievements here.

The concept of Appropriate and Practical Technologies has inspired a number of second generation initiatives. One area of particular interest is the APT for Africa programme working with mobile phones to collect data and provide access to local knowledge through Android mobile phones.

The e-Media Unit is playing a leading role in coordinating these developments working closely with partners in industry, Africa and other universities. For more information, please contact Nick Short on nshort@rvc.ac.uk.

Presentation to Africa Gathering on Mobile Telephony

2009-04-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

Presentation we made to Africa Gathering on 25th April 2009 about mobile telephony in Africa.

WikiVet - Integrating CAA

2009-04-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

The WikiVet project has just received funding of £ 4,770 from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Trust to support the production of self assessment within the wiki. WikiVet is managed through a steering group including the veterinary schools at Cambridge, Edinburgh, Nottingham and London as well as the LIVE Centre at the RVC and the MEDEV Subject Centre.

WikiVet is a collaborative Web 2.0 based initiative which supports a global community of students and lecturers with a common interest in veterinary education. Since its establishment in 2007 as a predominantly pathology based website, WikiVet has expanded to cover the preclinical and clinical undergraduate curriculum with over 2,000 pages of content and 2,500 regular users accessing the material from a diverse range of countries.

Whilst directed and supervised by members of academic staff at the UK veterinary schools, all the information in WikiVet is compiled by a team of highly motivated veterinary undergraduates endeavouring to create an online version of the entire veterinary curriculum. Wiki technologies allow text to be supplemented with a combination of video clips, photographs and interactive material providing a more comprehensive and engaging overview of a subject than any textbook.

The next phase of WikiVet development will integrate online MCQ self assessment tools throughout the wiki. This will enhance the existing content by providing an interactive way for students to identify the sections that would be of most benefit for them to study. Undergraduate students will develop the material supervised by a recent veterinary graduate over 4 weeks in the summer 2009 vacation. In addition incentives will provided for clinical staff to review and correct the completed questions.

More information can be found by registering with WikiVet

Zoomable microsocope slides

2009-02-01T01:23:00.001-08:00

We have recently introduced a new tool called Slide Path in our teaching. This allows us to upload high definition microscope slides onto a web server from where they can be examined using a special viewer. It really is quite fascinating to be able to zoom in up to 40x on an image of a mouse embryo, scan the image and adjust the contrast.

The tool is quite powerful as it allows you to add annotations and even assessments. In addition images can have restricted permissions or shared with colleagues in other institutions.

Have a look at a few examples by following this link.

JISC insert with the Guardian

2008-12-02T03:42:00.000-08:00

There was a fascinating insert in today's Guardian called "the digital student". The supplement provided a range of examples of good practice in e-learning. There was an article on podcasting featuring Professor John Fothergill who has been an inspiration to us through his work with Gilly Salmon on the Impala project. There was also a short article about our own APT STAIRS project under the heading Collaboration is the Key. It is good to see that JISC is now actively promoting the potential benefits of e-learning using the numerous case studies that they have funded over the last few years.

Appropriate and Practical Technologies - Google Apps?

2008-11-16T03:48:00.000-08:00

The RVC is lead partner in a JISC funded collaboration of Bloomsbury Colleges. This initiative (APT STAIRS) is testing new collaborative technologies to create a common space where users (students, teachers, administrators and researchers) with different skills can work online together. The project is focusing on the use of Google Docs and other online document creation tools to ensure uptake and adoption across the six partners in the Bloomsbury Colleges consortium.

At a "Demonstrator Lunch" last week ten of the pilot projects were presented by colleagues from each of the six Bloomsbury Colleges. All these projects had used Google Apps in different ways to support teaching, research and administration. This included a project at Birkbeck where students were able to contribute research data in a practical class to a Google spreadsheet and graph using Asus laptops. The RVC profiled a project where our library staff had created a common Goggle Doc where they could keep a collective list of books that had been requested by students - a simple application that has saved many hours of work.

More information about the demonstrators can be found here. Information on a cross campus survey of technology use is available here - this shows the different profile of staff and students when it comes to technology use.

eVet News

2008-10-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

We set up a veterinary news Wiki for our focus group students. This has proved to be so popular that it's been opened up to all RVC students. This wiki pulls together news items from around the World relevant to our veterinary students. As of today we have 115 news items and 423 views. Students can subcribe through an RSS feed allowing them to keep up to date without having to navigate to the Wiki.

The Launch of WikiVet

2008-10-10T06:04:00.001-07:00

Yesterday saw the launch of the WikiVet project (www.wikivet.net) at an event in Newcastle University. This is a joint initiative between four UK veterinary schools with funding from the Higher Education Academy and JISC. It is based on the development of a veterinary version of Wikipedia. However it has a number of features which distinguish if from it's big brother:

all the content has been written by veterinary students and graduates from the particpating vet schools
the content is peer reviewed by recent veterinary graduates and subject specialists in each vet school
access to the wiki is restricted to registered users who are either students or recognised veterinary graduates

These features mean that WikiVet has the advantage of having some level of Quality Assurance - something which reassures academics who dislike students using Wikipedia as a reference source. It also means that the content has a specifi veterinary and education focus which is much more relevant for veterinary students than a simple search of Wikipedi which will mainly throw up medical references.

WikiVet has been in genesis for the past 12 months prior to the launch. It already covers sections such as Anatomy and Physiology, Pathology, Immunology and Bacteriology totalling over 1,000 pages of text and many thousands of images. The wiki has been developed around a series of subject areas each with their own content map (CMAP) - the map not only helps to determine the structure of the wiki but also provides a clickable navigation system.

The site has a few unique features. Fo example the student authors have developed a simple Flash card system which involves mousing over white text to make it visible - simple but highly effective. There are also various signposting systems to resources developed by the different vet schools such as Computer Aided Learning, Digital Videos and Powerpoints. Finally registered users can a simple Zeemap to see who else around the world is using the site and add their own pin to a Google map.

You see a one hour Elluminate recording of the launch here - this includes presentations by some of the principle developers and students involved in the project.

What is this blog about?

2008-10-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

For sometime we have been using an internal blog running within our Blackboard VLE (Learning Objects LX). This has been a useful team building tool, though we all find it takes a bit of discipline to keep adding to it. So it seems only natural to take the next step and produce a public blog linked in to our web site.

It feels a little indulgent to set up a blog publicising our own work. However we are not trying to suggest that we know better than anybody else out there what the solutions to e-learning are - far from it. Rather this is an attempt to share our experience and hopefully get the chance to learn from others - so please do feel inspired to add your comments to our postings.

The e-media Unit at the RVC is a talented team with a wide range of skills. This embraces everything from Coldfusion development, streaming video, podcasting, computer aided assessment, VLEs, e-CPD and online classrooms, digital images, clinical case recording, wikis and Google Apps. I hope that this blog will come to reflect a range of our experiences with different members of the team describing their own activities.

As a starting point you might like to take a look at our review site to get an idea of the kind of projects we are involved - see if you can save Jess, in our emergency clinical simulator.

Archived e-RVC Newsletters

2008-08-16T04:10:00.000-07:00

The e-RVC Newsletters have now been replaced by a e-media blog. Links to past issues can be found below:

e-RVC issue 04 Summer 2006
e-RVC issue 03 Spring 2006
e-RVC issue 02 Autumn 2005
e-RVC issue 01 Summer 2005