Research Platform Services Blog
Month
By Nikki Rubinstein & Dr Christina Tuke Flanders
Last week Nikki explained the importance of using Learning Objectives and Signposting to orientate the learner to your curriculum. She also explained how to scaffold learning to make your content more ‘digestible’. If you are following these teaching tips you are evolving into a more sophisticated trainer. In Pokemon parlance you are becoming healthy and strong and ready to battle in the gym!
This week Nikki will share with you the power of Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning. These techniques will help you as a trainer to ‘activate’ your learners to to engage deeper in your training. Activated participants learn a lot more than passive learners who just sit and listen. It reminds me of the Confucius saying: “I hear and I forget. I see and I understand. I do and I understand”. Give it a try and notice the difference in your training. Over to Nikki…
Peer learning
How often have you heard a suggestion from your parents or a teacher and just completely dismissed it? But when your friend voices the same opinion, suddenly it’s worth listening to! We are often more open to ideas from our peers, compared to authority figures. A deeper understanding of key concepts can be achieved with collaborative learning, compared to learning one one’s own. Teachers can facilitate peer learning through group discussions or by setting group challenges.
I asked our Training Consultant, Christina, why peer learning was such an effective tool. She explained: “Take a look at the Seven Principles of Adult Learning. Adults learn best in informal situations, this is in contrast to children who need a highly structured curriculum. Adults come with all different kinds of experience and prior knowledge that they can share and offer to each other. Peer learning is far more compelling and interesting because you can relate better to your immediate peers and think to yourself ‘I can do that too!’ Of course, a good trainer needs to facilitate peer learning in the classroom and provide some structure upon which learners can springboard on to new ideas and thoughts.”
Problem-based learning
Learning-by-doing is not just a cute phrase. You will never understand the pitfalls better than if you have already made the mistakes yourself. What better to place to make mistakes than in the classroom, where a whole group of people can help you fix them? It’s much worse to make mistakes on your own and struggle to find a solution.
Didactic teaching (chalk and talk), where you talk and they listen, can be extremely boring for students! Problem-based learning provides an alternative approach. Explain a concept for 5-10 minutes and then let your students engage in active learning. Set the students challenges, problems and collaborative learning tasks. This allows students to actively engage in learning and encourages peer learning. This will also give you a break and make each block of teaching less exhausting!
Each person learns in a different way. Some people are visual, others auditory and some are kinaesthetic learners (VAK). If you can encourage all these forms of learning (seeing, hearing and doing) then you’ll be ticking all the boxes. Being able to ‘do’ something in the classroom increases motivation and engagement. And besides, it’s much more fun than listening to someone drone on for two hours!
Once again, thank you Nikki for unpicking the power of Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning. Lots of great ideas for trainers to use. Next week will be our final post. We will be looking at the value of Assessment and Reflection in training. Stay tuned!
Jas Coles-Black is a final year medical student, and a Research Community Coordinator at Research Platforms Services at The University of Melbourne where she grows her community in medical 3D printing. As part of the #3DMed initiative, she is an avid proponent of 3D printing in the medical space.
What is 3D printing?
3D printing is a broad term used to describe several additive
manufacturing techniques, where structures are built by depositing material
layer by layer. This is in contrast to more traditional manufacturing
techniques, which involve moulding and manipulating the materials of interest. It
has been hailed as “the next industrial revolution” that could fundamentally
change the status quo, and the way we practise medicine.
Image source: http://www.stratasys.com/j750
Bioprinting and Regenerative Medicine
Bioprinting is one aspect of 3D printing, and involves combining living cells, biocompatible materials and biochemical substances in order to create tissue-like analogues. This enables the creation of biological and organ substitutes for research and clinical purposes, such as the fabrication of artificial organs for transplantation. 3D printing has been used in regenerative medicine not only to print scaffolds, which can be subsequently seeded with cells, but can also involve printing tissues using actual cells.
Being able to print human tissue is viewed by many as the holy grail of 3D printing. It would bypass current limitations of organ transplantation, such as the scarcity of donor organs, the need for lifelong immunosuppression and the potential for organ rejection, giving it enormous potential to save lives and transform transplant medicine. Be that as it may, the improvements that have already been made with current 3D printing technology are impressive and wide-ranging, and should not be discounted.
The Developing Future of Medicine
3D printing is everywhere. It’s already being used extensively by academic institutions and research laboratories, and 3D printers can even be found in Aldi, for as little as $500. Its widespread availability to the public is perhaps the true litmus test for how mainstream the technology has become.
Over the past three years, there has been an explosion of interest in medical 3D printing across many disciplines, with hospitals and universities establishing institutional hubs and pursuing collaborations with industry leaders. Whilst it is yet to truly become part of mainstream medicine, its use is rapidly increasing.
The true strength of 3D printing lies in its ability to
revolutionise personalised medicine. 3D models can be generated from patient
scans, allowing surgeons a novel method to both visualise and manually
interrogate a patient’s anatomy prior to surgery. These models are also
fantastic tools in patient education, and go a long way to helping patients
understand their disease when compared to two dimensional drawings.
Image source: Author’s Own
Titanium 3D printed prostheses, specific to each individual patient’s anatomy, can also be used to provide each patient with a perfect fit.
Yet another use is the development of patient-specific surgical instruments. On-demand 3D printing of surgical instruments is being explored in conflict zones, and even long-duration space missions.
Of course, the technology is not just confined to the surgical specialties. 3D printed tablets and drug delivery systems are the next step in the development of personalised medicines. Multi-drug polypills with individualised dosing and separate release profiles could be used to aid complex treatment regimens and improve patient adherence.
As futuristic as they may sound, these fundamental changes
to how we practise medicine aren’t as far away as we might think. The FDA
recently approved a 3D
printed levetiracetam pill, printed with a drug which is already used for
seizures.
Image source: Aprecia Pharmaceuticals
Simulation models with various pathologies can also be created from suitable patient scans, allowing specialty trainees the opportunity to practise complex procedures the entire way through, rather than attempting the procedure for the first time on a real patient with real stakes.
In forensic medicine, 3D printed representations of injuries are more easily understood by laypeople for use in court, maintaining the dignity of the deceased whilst providing an excellent, less confronting representation of the deceased’s anatomical structures and injuries.
Generating Models for 3D Printing
Patient specific models are readily generated using well-established radiographic techniques such as CT and MRI. In this respect, 3D models of patient anatomy are the natural extension of our current imaging processes. The data from these scans can be used to create an initial digital model of patient anatomy, and the resulting file can then be 3D printed using a variety of machines.
Image source: Author’s Own
In short, 3D printing could very well be shaping up to be the future of medicine. The current applications of 3D printing in the medical field are promising, and the scenarios mentioned above could one day be the norm. Despite all this, 3D printing in the medical field is still very much in its infancy, and only time will tell if this new technology will truly become a revolutionary one.
The Doctus ProjectFounded in October 2013, the Doctus Project is a not-for-profit health journalism organisation offering an online platform for intelligent commentary and informed discussion for students and professionals alike.
The Doctus Project is particularly focused on issues that pertain to health – it is dedicated to covering contemporary and important issues and events in the areas of Health Economics, Law & Ethics, Politics and Research & Technology. The Doctus Project offers an opportunity for its readers to gain an insight into the diverse and unique range of experiences of many health professionals and other members of our community.
You may be curious and ask what is FreeSurfer. Well, it has nothing to do with surfing but many people in my research community believe that using the results that it creates is as fun as surfing itself! I am a researcher in medical imaging and a Research Community Coordinator in the exciting field of medical image analysis and I commonly use FreeSurfer, which is a popular neuroimage analysis package. I hope some of you appreciate the excitement that creating a 3D surface model of a human brain can bring; looking into brains internal structures, and decoding its emotions and activity by writing some simple commands is a lot of fun, quite adventurous and much easier than surfing! If you are curious to try for yourself, then you should attend some of the courses that we run on medical image analysis tools.
Last month with the support from the University of Melbourne, my very supportive supervisor A/Prof. Leigh Johnston and my amazing team at Research Platforms Services, I had the chance to travel to the US, visit some laboratories and attend the FreeSurfer course in Boston. The course was held by the developers of the Freesurfer package at Laboratory of Computational Neuroimaging who are affiliated with MIT/and Harvard universities. It was an intensively interactive course that covered both the theoretical and practical aspects of functional and structural brain image analysis using Freesurfer. One of my favorite parts of the course was “A Non-physicist’s Intro to MRI”. Dr. Dylan Tisdall remarking that “we are all a dirty bag of water with some protein in it”. So he taught us the introduction to MR physics using a fish bowl!!
In addition to the course, I enjoyed networking with the FreeSurfer course developers, who are some of the top researchers in their field, and also sharing ideas with medical imaging researchers from all around the world. Among attendees, I think I was the winner of travelling the furthest distance, with the biggest time difference and having the worst jet lag! At the end of the course everyone was completely fascinated by the capabilities of the software package and they could not wait to get back to their hometown and start carrying out the analysis on their own data.
#FreeSurfer course is coming to a close. Attendees can’t wait to use all those amazing tools on their own data!! pic.twitter.com/OyyvRvWc51
Inspired by the course in Boston, I am preparing to teach our own FreeSurfer workshop at the University of Melbourne; to those who have not started using it yet and to those who are not aware of its full capabilities. Especially since the FreeSurfer package is installed on the University’s High Performance Computing (HPC) system, it is accessible to all departments, and makes running analysis on large imaging datasets really fast and easy. What do you think? Please feel free to get in contact with me if you would like more information, or if you’re keen in being part of a larger FreeSurfer community here at the University of Melbourne! r.shishegar@student.unimelb.edu.au
By Nikki Rubinstein & Dr Christina Tuke Flanders
Foreword by Dr Christina Tuke Flanders:
In last week’s blog post Nikki shared her experience of using Ice Breaker techniques to warm up participants so they are primed to learn. She also explained how giving your training participants the ‘Big Picture’ of your training can orientate participants to the overall objective of your training.
This week Nikki will explain:
- The importance of using Learning Objectives so participants clearly know what you want them to learn and why.
- How signposting throughout your training can keep your participants engaged in the entire training process
- And how to ‘scaffold’ learning so your participants can easily digest the learning objectives
Learning Objectives
It can be really hard to take on new information if you don’t know why you’re doing it! What are the objectives for the class and what steps do you need to go through to meet these objectives? For example, learning about the use of different brackets without any context may feel a bit useless - why do I need to know this? In contrast, if you know that the goal is to be able to analyse your data with a programming language, then learning the basic syntax of that programming language is useful.
It’s important that you convey to students the reasoning behind what they are learning and why. If you give them an overall ‘road map’ of what will be covered and how it relates to the end goal, students will be more likely to attend to and engage with your lesson.
Signposting
The big picture is not only important at the beginning of a class, but throughout the class as well. Keep reminding students where you are located along the road map of your training in order to maintain focus and motivation. Referring back to the big picture in this way is called signposting. This will help with the training pacing, as well as maintaining momentum.
Scaffolding
Imagine being dropped in the middle of the ocean with some scuba diving gear and no scuba diving knowledge. Literally being dropped in the deep end! Expecting you to be able to scuba dive is ridiculous. However, if you went through a series of lessons to receive your certification, the dive may be a little more achievable.
Be careful that you don’t drop your students in the deep end - it will make your participants feel like a fish out of water! Don’t jump straight to teaching the learning objectives. It is important to start at your student’s current knowledge base and slowly build up their knowledge from there. This concept is called scaffolding and was first described by Lev Vygotsky. By breaking large tasks into small, more manageable tasks, students can build on their current knowledge base to learn new concepts.
Thanks Nikki. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on: The power of using Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning.
by Emilie Walsh
Recently I was lucky enough to do a 3D printing workshop for a new crowd: the animation students from the school of Film & TV at the VCA!
Today the #animation students @vca_mcm tried #tinkerCAD during our @ResPlat 3D modelling & #3Dprinting workshop! #resbaz @unimelb pic.twitter.com/CZy0xZKQLZ
You might be wondering how 3D printing is interesting for animators? Well, it is in a very creative way! 3D printing has been used in recent years in the field of stop motion film, and with amazing outcomes. Stop-Motion animation is a handmade old style animation, where puppets are shot frame by frame to create an animated movie. One of the best-known examples must be The Nightmare before Christmas, by Tim Burton (1993). But what else has the industry produced 20 years later using 21st century technology?
Some recent animated feature films use 3D printing to design puppet characters, rather than making them with traditional means of fabrication (e.g. clay or latex modelling). 3D printing allows design modification to be done easily and has the ability to print large varieties of it using animal replacement techniques.
Series of 3D printed head for replacement animation technic from ParaNorman movie, Laika studio
You can easily print hundreds of faces for one character to mimic the numerous facial expression of the human body. And by replacing the 3D printed element at each frame, you create the illusion of motion. This basic rule of stop motion animation is now coming to new life with 3D printing!
Check out the amazing things that are done with simple plastic filament 3D printers, such as one we have on campus at Melbourne University:
During our two-hour workshop, the future animators learned to use TinkerCAD, a free and accessible software for 3D modelling. They designed some simple models, including this cool snake:
Springy Snake in TinkerCAD
We found the model on Thingiverse, and modified it by creating a hole through it, so we could pass a wire into the model allowing the snake to « take the pose » for a stop motion video.
Check the cool GIF we made with it!
But the possibility of 3D printing for animation go far beyond this! Some large film companies, such as Laika Studio, now create entire films with 3D printing characters and props.
How will the next generation of animators respond to the technology? This is certainly a very promising field of research in animation. Gilles-Alexandre Deschaud is a PhD candidate in Paris 8 University in France, and has dedicated his practice led-research project to creating a short stop-motion animation film, entirely made of 3D prints:
Following our workshop, we printed a whole puppet, using a model on Thingiverse, that we put together:
3D printed puppet from “Springy Friend” on Thingiverse
Now let’s just wait and see how the animators can bring life to our little springy friend!
If you are curious about 3D modelling and 3D printing, or if you wonder how you could use it in your research, be in touch, or check our upcoming ResBaz conference
On Wednesday October 12th I joined Belinda Weaver, Amanda Miotto & Stephanie Bradbury at the annual eResearch conference (hosted in Melbourne) to discuss successes and challenges of our - now global - Research Bazaar conference.
Underway with our #resbaz BoF #eResAu16 @heyDejan kicking off pic.twitter.com/5x5CNMCWVE
— Belinda Weaver (@cloudaus)
October 12, 2016
I opened with “ResBaz: The Origins” a timeline of how ResBaz came to be what it is today and teasing out some of the key themes and anthems our community has picked up. In 2014 we were faced with a problem: too many digital research tools, not enough support. ResBaz was our answer: create communities around these tools so researchers could be empowered in digital literacy. Melbourne quickly saw ResBaz develop into a community, campaign and finally a free three day intensive conference. ResBaz also became a space where researchers could battle messy datasets as well as isolation and loneliness. We’ve previously written about how community can combat loneliness in research. You can read summaries of ResBaz 2015 and ResBaz 2016 through the links provided - and for a complete understanding of how ResBaz was founded, read this article from the Research Whisperer.
ResBaz a community of support empowering researchers in digital tools. @heyDejan @unimelb #eResAu16 pic.twitter.com/CusFqhIenG
— Jennifer Warburton (@TzenniferW)
October 12, 2016
Moving forward I looked at the complexities of shifting to a global ResBaz, hitting home that no one can “own” a community. ResBaz 2016 saw sites in Melbourne, Auckland, Perth, Dunedin, Brisbane, Sydney, Guayaquil, Vancouver, Oklahoma & Wellington. ResBaz 2017 will see more pop up! What binds these sites (apart from a handy hashtag, #ResBaz) are three core values: Community, Diversity & Open Access. ResBaz can therefore vary in size, scale, teaching material, and so on.
Diversity, open access and community. Key values for ResBaz. Social aspect is critical. @heyDejan @ResBaz #eResAu16 pic.twitter.com/iA7ommkMab
— Jennifer Warburton (@TzenniferW)
October 12, 2016
To conclude my section, I announced the changes we’d be making for ResBaz Melbourne 2017. Rather than an intensive three days of teaching/learning a digital tool, we’re putting the ‘Bazaar’ back into ResBaz. We’ll be offering a number of ‘ResPitches’ in a variety of digital tools and services. Attendees, grouped through digital tool preferences, will move around the Bazaar and listen to the stories of these tools: how can they be used to do research better, faster, smarter? They’ll also have the opportunity to sign-up to training workshops/meet-ups for each tool scheduled for the weeks following the conference.
Why the change? We figured that in terms of pedagogy learning a complex digital tool works best when it’s staggered over time. Learning is a process, and at Melbourne we have the resources to provide a community of dedicated support year round. We wanted to shift ResBaz from being a “one-stop-shop” to an “induction” - a kickstarter - for the year to come. ResBaz 2017 will be a chance to explore, learn about and engage with the community.
REGISTRATIONS FOR MELBOURNE 2017 ARE NOW OPEN.
Belinda Weaver then took the floor to discuss ResBaz Brisbane “by the numbers”. The statistics really spoke to the success of the Brisbane’s team’s ability to organise, motivate and create enthusiasm in their communities. Belinda also showed off Brisbane’s digital poster display (to which I was made very jealous of), and their ‘feedback tree’ (a simple idea of adding comments to post-its and sticking them onto a sticker tree).
Here’s @cloudaus talking #ResBaz Brisbane, “it’s about helping people find their feet in a strange and new community” #eResAu16 pic.twitter.com/nvvPFX9POy
— Dejan (@heyDejan)
October 12, 2016
Next up Amanda Miotto spoke of the importance of “keeping it social”. At the end of the day, ResBaz was about community - joining likeminded people together across very particular needs (such as digital literacy). Belinda said it well when she commented that ResBaz was “about helping people find their feet in a strange and new community". Tweet Amanda if you’d like some tips on how to socially engage your audience.
Need some tips for doing a #ResBaz? @AmandaMiottoGU has you covered! Knowledge Bazaar sounds so great #eResAu16 pic.twitter.com/KdfLAtJedy
— Dejan (@heyDejan)
October 12, 2016
And last - but certainly not least - Stephanie Bradbury explored the (much needed) logistics of running a ResBaz event. Institutional support, an enthusiastic volunteer base, sponsorship, an attractive proposal and an ever-flowing Twitter stream were all listed as key points of organisational success!
Institutional support is the biggest influence for #ResBaz being a success or failure, says @stephbradbury #eResAu16 pic.twitter.com/DcTKmtHGON
— Dejan (@heyDejan)
October 12, 2016
We concluded by emphasising that there’s also a community of support attached to ResBaz organisers. We have a “ResBaz Cookbook” (a ‘how to’ in crafting a ResBaz) which is a collaborative effort between a variety of ResBaz sites. We also organise ourselves on Slack - and anyone is welcome to join! Simply email your interest to research.bazaar@gmail.com
by Nikki Rubinstein & Dr Christina Tuke Flanders
Foreword by Dr Christina Tuke Flanders:
Pedagogy is a word that is starting to be banded around much more in the Colab Space at Research Platforms. And this is music to my ears! Before we get ahead of ourselves, you may be asking yourself what is pedagogy? It is commonly defined as: “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.” And if you want to know how to say pedagogy click here!
In short pedagogy is concerned with what a teacher does to influence learning in others. Here at Research Platforms our team of ResComs work very hard behind the scenes to provide top notch training on a vast array of digital tools.
As Training Consultant for Research Platforms one of my roles is to support ResComs to develop thoughtful curriculums and think about the pedagogy behind the delivery of training. Therefore anyone who attends a training will experience a well paced curriculum, infused with a plethora of challenges that scaffolds learning in an engaging manner. Students leave a training session with a secure knowledge and understanding of a digital tool - and possibly shaving weeks if not months off their research data analysis. Now, that’s music to anyone’s ears.
So how do they achieve this? Let’s get back to the pedagogy - which is the bedrock for a successful training.
In this four part blog post series Nikki Rubinstein will take you on a journey through the key teaching tips she has integrated into her training. You will learn:
- The engaging tactics of Icebreakers and Big Picture
- The importance of Learning Objectives, Scaffolding and Sign Posting
- The power of Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning
- The value of Assessment and Reflection.
Like Pokemon Go, Nikki has been catching ‘Em all. Like any good Pokemon enthusiast you start by catching the basic pokemons like Pidgey and Rattata. They have not evolved to be strong but are essential to kick start the game. Similarly, Icebreakers and Big Picture techniques are essential to get your training off to a strong start.
Over to Nikki to to explain how…
Thanks Christina. When I took on the R Research Community Coordinator role with ResBaz earlier this year I asked myself many questions: What makes a good teacher? How do I know if my students have learnt anything in my training sessions?! Is being a good teacher a skill that you’re born with or is it something that can be learnt? Luckily, I was given the chance to work with educational psychologist, Dr Christina Tuke Flanders. It turns out that a lot of what makes a good teacher CAN be learnt - there is hope!
The first thing to realise is that a noisy classroom is a productive classroom. If students are talking, then they are actively engaged (which is what we want!). We want students to discuss and exchange ideas. We want them to challenge their understanding of course content. We want students primed for both learning and networking. We want them to talk! So how do we get students talking?
Ice breakers are a great way to get the conversation started. An ice breaker is an activity or game used to make people who don’t know each other feel more relaxed together. It’s a way to get the conversation started. I like to start my classes by asking the students on each table to come up with a team name. This not only helps get them talking to each other but creates an immediate bond. Another fun ice breaker is to pose a question to the class, such as ‘when was the last time you wanted to throw your computer out the window?’ The room will be buzzing with conversation after posing that particular question!
After an ice breaker, your students are primed for learning. The next challenge is to narrow their focus down to your course content. However, if you jump straight into the details, you’re likely to lose the attention of many of your students. Picture a silent classroom; the sounds of crickets chirping. Not exactly the picture of a productive classroom that we were trying to build up with our ice breaker activity!
It’s important to start with a big picture view of what will be covered in your course. You should answer the questions:
In my case, my students are learning to use the programming language R. Learning R is useful for my students because it will allow them to analyse and visualise their data. The big picture view is that using R will allow them to create easily reproducible analyses and plots for their research.
Thanks Nikki. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on: The importance of Learning Objectives, Scaffolding and Sign Posting.