Centre for Bioscience

I am a Senior Teaching Fellow at the department of Biology & Biochemistry, University of Bath. In addition to maintaining an active research profile, I have been interested in enhancing the student learning experience in the biosciences.

These include introducing peer assessment for practicals, building new approaches to undergraduate research projects, standardising enquiry-led introductory courses for lab practicals, enhancing large group lecturing, leading cross-cultural curriculum development, and more recently, I have introduced the university to the use of open educational resources.

A few years ago, I had developed an interactive online e-learning tutorial on cancer biology, designed using Adobe Flash software to help conceptualise complex cellular processes in DNA replication, damage and repair. This was supported by formative quizzes, references and printer-ready notes.

The resource was part of a blended learning package that has been highly popular with students, who appreciated the self-paced learning and interactivity, enabling them to understand these complex pathways through interactive animations. It also attracted a lot of interest from academics within and outside the UK, when the evaluation of the resource as a learning tool was published (Hejmadi 2007, Bioscience Education, Vol 9-2).

The self-paced learning and the creation of reusable learning objects used within this resource makes it ideal as a resource for open use by other academics.