Resources have been funded by JISC through the Learning and Teaching programme.

Learning and Teaching Resources in Health and Life Sciences

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Funding programme: Learning and Teaching (5/99) programme

The following resources have been funded by JISC through its Learning and Teaching programme. The aim of the programme was to develop a wide range of electronic content and to adapt it directly for use in learning and teaching.

The programme has now been completed and has created a wealth of resources, most of which are freely available to further and higher education institutions. Most of the resources can be accessed through the web.

Bristol BioMed Learning and Teaching (BB-LT)

Bristol BioMed Learning and Teaching (BB-LT) consists of interlinked resources which together provide a coherent strategy for the use, evaluation and integration of images from the BioMed Image Archive with mainstream teaching activities. Each individual resource addresses a specific learning and teaching need. The project combines examples of, and guidance on, the use of the archive, including tutorials, case studies and 'how-to' guides. See case studies 

Access conditions:  Freely available

Contact details:  Jill Evans  Tel:  0117 928 7164  jill.evans@bristol.ac.uk

http://www.brisbio.ac.uk/bblt/

Click and Go Video

Imagine using a technology that could capture students' attention, engage them and leave them with a richer, more meaningful and vivid learning experience. The use of streaming digital video and audio to support web-based learning resources is rapidly becoming an attractive option for many educators. This technology not only provides on-demand access and opportunities for student interaction, but can also enhance teaching practice to open up new ways of representing, delivering and sharing a subject discipline. Through its use, teachers can visualise a process or show how something works, moves or performs live, without the need to rely on purely text-based forms. They can enable their students to "be there", without the constraints of time, space and safety.
Video Streaming: A Guide for Educational Development, developed by the Click and Go Video team, is the ideal beginners' guide to this exciting new area.

Access conditions:  Freely available

Contact details:  Clive Young  Tel:  0141 331 8434  clive.young@gcal.ac.uk

http://www.clickandgovideo.ac.uk/

FILTER - Focusing Images for Learning and Teaching, an Enriched Resource

The FILTER project has produced a web site and database containing useful examples and resources for anyone wishing to use digital images in learning and teaching. The primary resource is a database containing more than two dozen examples of image-based learning and teaching resources and hundreds of digital images. The exemplars range from PowerPoint presentations and web sites to multimedia and interactive tutorials. These have all been created by practising lecturers, designed for use in their own contexts with the intention that they be re-used and adapted for use in other contexts and subject areas. To enable and support materials creation, each exemplar is accompanied by a case study and 'how-to' guide. The database is fully searchable by image, subject area and tutorial type so if, for example, the user wishes to see how images are used to teach geography, he or she could keyword search on 'geography', by type of image (eg 'aerial maps'), or by delivery method (eg 'web tutorial'). The database is also browsable. The images, like all materials in the FILTER database, are free for educational use and come with complete metadata records and creation history.

Access conditions:  Freely available

Contact details:  Jill Evans  Tel:  0117 928 7164  filter-info@bristol.ac.uk

http://www.filter.ac.uk/

HERON

HERON provides a complete copyright-clearance and document-supply service, including digitisation and paper coursepacks where necessary, to academic institutions wishing to provide online access to learning materials.

Access conditions:  Institutional subscription required

Contact details:  Tel:  01865 799133  heron@ingenta.com

http://www.heron.ingenta.com/  

INFORMS / INHALE

The INFORMS/INHALE database is a pool of over 400 interactive, bite-sized, online information skills units for students within all the main subject areas taught in further and higher education institutions. A unique aspect of the materials is that they are based on searching LIVE quality information databases that lecturers now expect their students to use to gather information for course assignments. Accessible versions for the visually impaired (that may also be customised) are automatically generated when a new unit is written. The INFORMS/INHALE database resources have been used in face-to-face teaching sessions as well as linked into different VLEs and institutional web sites.

Access conditions:  Freely available

Contact details:  Jennifer Brook  j.a.brook@hud.ac.uk

http://inhale.hud.ac.uk/cgi-bin/informs.pl?area=home  

Lifesign

Lifesign provides a collection of rights-cleared streamed videos via the project website.  The website also provides software facilities for users to customise and embed video segments into other learning environments. A number of case studies have demonstrated that streaming video can have a significant impact in blended learning situations (online resources supporting face-to-face activities), provided there are appropriate technical and student support services in place.

Access conditions:  Freely available
There are fixed-term licences for some of the material. See web site for further details.

Contact details:  William Garrison (for advice on required technical specifications and details of rights conditions) william.garrison@port.ac.uk
Andrew Dalgleish (for information about the resource) ajdalgle@glam.ac.uk

http://www.lifesign.ac.uk/

LTSN Bioscience ImageBank

The LTSN Bioscience ImageBank is an online shared image resource of freely available bioscience images which have been copyright cleared for educational use. This growing collection of quality-assured bioscience images, with associated scientific text, has been developed entirely through contributions from the bioscience educational community and industry. The ImageBank supports the whole of the biosciences which encompass a wide range of subject disciplines within the life sciences, food and agricultural sciences. An online image-submission facility greatly encourages image contributions. Users are able to search or browse for images by scientific/common name, systematic classification, subject discipline, collection and contributor. Other inbuilt facilities include the ability to download images to a preview folder, thus allowing multiple images to be downloaded as a ZIP file along with the associated scientific text. The LTSN Bioscience ImageBank also provides a database of evaluated links to other relevant image collections.

Access conditions:  Freely available.
Image contributors, their institutions and the LTSN Bioscience ImageBank must be clearly acknowledged in any use of the image

Contact details: Aurora Levesley imagebank@ltsnbio.leeds.ac.uk

http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/imagebank  

MIMAS - CrossFire Training (learning and teaching materials for CrossFire)

MIMAS CrossFire Training (MIMAS-XFT) is a web-based, self-paced learning package designed to teach new users of the CrossFire chemical information system how to get started, and enable those already familiar with the system to learn advanced searching and data manipulation techniques. The package is split into two levels, introductory and advanced, with five units in each.

CrossFire comprises the Beilstein organic chemistry and Gmelin inorganic chemistry databases which contain a wealth of chemical and bibliographic information, including physical and biological properties and detailed chemical reactions, as well as abstracts and references obtained from the primary chemical literature. As a result of working through the various modules, the CrossFire Commander software-user will be able to search effectively by both text and chemical structure diagrams in order to retrieve detailed information. This can be downloaded and exported into other packages such as spreadsheet or reference-management software.

Access conditions:  Available via Athens authentication free of charge. (Note that access to the CrossFire databases is only available to members of subscribing institutions.)

MIMAS-XFT can be accessed at http://xft.mimas.ac.uk/ Macromedia Flash Player version 6.0.79 or higher is required to run MIMAS-XFT

Contact details:  Tel:  0161 275 6109 crossfire@mimas.ac.uk

http://xft.mimas.ac.uk/

RDN Virtual Training Suite

The RDN Virtual Training Suite offers free Internet training via a set of 61 interactive tutorials on the web. There is a tutorial for most of the subjects taught in UK higher and further education, each offering a guide to key Internet resources for the subject and tips for Internet searching and critical evaluation of web sites. Tutorials are being used in taught courses, student induction and information, and research skills classes. They are easy to link to from VLEs and departmental web pages. Supplementary "Resources for Teachers" are available with ideas for use with students.

The Virtual Training Suite is just one of the resources offered by the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a national web service pointing to thousands of high-quality Internet resources that can support learning, teaching and research. Tutorials include:

  • Internet for Agriculture, Food and Forestry
  • Internet Bioresearcher
  • Internet for Nature
  • Internet Vet

Access conditions:  Freely available

Contact details:  Emma Place  Tel:  0117 928 7183 emma.place@bristol.ac.uk

http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/

TRILT - Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching

The BUFVC's Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT) is an online database of UK broadcasts, covering over 300 channels, including terrestrial, cable, and satellite television (with regional variations), all national and many local radio stations.

TRILT facilitates the use of audio-visual material in learning, teaching and research, allowing staff and students to identify television and radio material relevant to their area of study. In many cases, TRILT indicates sources of post-transmission copies, including the BUFVC's Off-Air Recording Back-Up Service and online copies of radio programmes. Transmission details for forthcoming programmes are available at least ten days in advance, allowing users to plan their viewing and recording. TRILT has a personalisation service enabling users to set auto-alerts to email them when programmes relevant to their interests are coming up. In addition, programmes selected for their value to the educational community are enhanced with further information, such as improved descriptions, additional keywords, bibliographies and web links.

TRILT grows by over a million records every year and, with the incorporation of the BUFVC's Television Index database into TRILT last year, the data span covers nine years of UK broadcasting (1995-2004: selective 1995-2001, comprehensive 2001 onwards).

Access conditions:  Available to BUFVC members using Athens Authentication

Contact details:  Marianne Open  Tel:  020 7393 1501  asktrilt@bufvc.ac.uk

http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/TRILT

  • Last updated on 07/01/09 by Kerry Ann Down