Perspectives Issue 2 / December 2016

Fire! Staff and students vital to simulated aircraft evacuation Staff and students played their full part in a simulated aircraft fire evacuation at the airport, designed to assess the reaction on-site and from the local emergency services to a potential disaster situation. Thirty volunteers acted as ‘casualties’ in the exercise, attended by emergency fire, ambulance and police services, along with the University’s fire crew, which used our own Boeing 737 aircraft. An increased realism saw organisers use a smoke machine in the baggage hold. Full emergency procedures were deployed, with local emergency services entering and travelling along the airport runway. The fire crew entered the aircraft with breathing gear and hoses, to assess the ‘injured’ passengers and evaluate them, helping the walking wounded and using body boards where necessary. Lindsay Grant, who is Cranfield Fire Service Manager, said: “It’s essential that we undertake an exercise like this to maintain our airport licence with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). To ensure everyone benefits fully, it needs to be as realistic as possible and it gives us and the emergency services the opportunity to ensure the teams are fully co-ordinated.” Watch your step! Slips, trips and falls are a serious matter and, according to the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, result in more than 11,000 major injuries each year. We can all help prevent accidents from happening by keeping our work Seen a spillage, trailing wire or something blocking a walkway? Instead of thinking it is someone else's problem, be responsible and do something about it! Your actions could make the difference between someone getting injured or not. If you are unable to sort it yourself, make sure you report it to someone from our Health and Safety team. Hazard spotting blitz If you have a few moments, use the checklist published on the intranet to review your work area and immediate external areas to identify any slip, trip or fall hazards. Our Health and Safety team can then take any necessary action. Slipped or tripped yourself? Make sure you report it Slips and trips can happen in a blink of an eye. If it has happened to you, make our Health and Safety team aware by completing the incident form on the intranet – ‘Services’ tab > ‘Health and Safety’ . Action can then be taken to prevent the hazard from being an accident waiting to happen. areas free from hazards. See it, sort it or report it

Enhancing the teaching and learning experience through Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) We have all heard of online, blended, distance and networked learning and flipping the classroom as just some of the methods of delivering learning, but what do they mean? Have you tried any? What opportunities and benefits can they provide the learning experience? Incorporating digital content provides new opportunities for academic colleagues to share their expertise in a number of ways and also offers increased opportunities for our learners to learn in a way that most suits them. Benefits of appropriately using technology to enhance teaching and learning include: • supporting individual teaching and learning styles • meeting learning accessibility requirements • increasing opportunities to learn from the cohort and facilitate group and social learning • learners able to access materials pre and post lecture, at a time to suit them • enabling academics to use contact time in other ways • enhanced course materials with the inclusion of links, interactive and animated models, diagrams and check your understanding style tests • enables the creation of easy access revision guides available at a time to suit your learners. Digital publications Bring traditional printed text and images to life with engaging interactive features such as embedded video, audio, animation and assessments. Print Refresh and enhance your printed course material for those learners who prefer hard copy to digital. Video and audio Video is best suited for creating short but powerful visual learning content using either live-action, screen-capture, animation or a combination. Audio is well suited for longer learning pieces that can be consumed either in private or on the go. The TEL team can help with the production of audio and video content but there is also a range of apps available for creating this content yourself, enabling you to quickly meet specific requests from your learners. eLearns Online eLearns enable a variety of learning modes to come together in one immersive package. Video, audio, text and imagery can be combined with quizzes, games and informal assessments to enhance the learner’s understanding of specific topics, instantly highlighting any gaps in their knowledge. Graphics Academic models, statistics and raw data can have enhanced impact when visually represented as clean, clear and consistently styled graphics. Online channels Taught courses predominantly use either BlackBoard or Moodle but there are additional online channels that can be used to supplement these to support and enable learning such as the University Yammer network and iTunes U. Cranfield’s iTunes U collection currently has in excess of 300 pieces of content available across our themes. New content is always welcome so if you have an idea for a piece of content or a course for iTunes U, please get in contact. There are a variety of ways of adding innovative digital content and learning opportunities to your current teaching materials.

Thirty students were ‘casualties’ in an exercise which used our own Boeing 737 aircraft.

To find out more about using any of these methods to support your teaching practice, contact the TELteam@cranfield.ac.uk

Education Insights Education Insights is a monthly webinar series facilitated by the TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) and CAAS (Centre for Andragogy & Academic Skills) teams which cover the life cycle of a course/programme, from design, development and delivery, through to marking, assessment and feedback. The full webinar programme and previously recorded sessions can be found on the intranet: 'Research, learning and teaching' tab > 'Education Insights'.

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Perspectives Keeping staff informed December 2016

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