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In this section:
See Also:
The College purchased the Blackboard Academic Suite in 2004 in conjunction with other Bloomsbury Colleges including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Institute of Education. The joint collaboration has provided many benefits including sharing technical support, pedagogic expertise, cost efficiencies on licence fees and common funding proposals.
Blackboard is used at the RVC to enable students to access their course materials online. It provides one central area for students to review class materials, to participant in online tests and directed learning sessions, and to collaborate with their peers and communicate with their tutors. Integrated with the RVC Streaming Server, Blackboard provides students with access to relevant multimedia such as videos of clinical procedures and lecture recordings both as podcasts and using the Echo360 lecture capture system.
Many aspects of the teaching of veterinary medicine lend themselves to video capture. The College has initiated a number of project in this area which have been well received by students. These include video recording or surgical techniques, clinical skills, dissections and information videos on the use of the library.
The College has been active in developing a wide range of CAL packages in collaboration with the other UK veterinary schools. Examples of some of the RVC packages currently being used by students both in London and at the other schools can be found here. The eMedia unit helps academic staff to create online tutorials and quizzes to support their teaching in both scheduled sessions and self-directed study.
This is a new initaitive which the RVC has launched to support graduates after they leave the College. It provides these alumni with ongoing access to the College VLE and email systems as part of our commitment to life long learning.
The e-Media Unit was responsible for a number of pilot projects in 2003 to explore the potential of online resources being used to support Continuing Professional Development.This technique was called e-CPD and has since been adopted by the RVC CPD Unit as a major component of the College's continuing education provision. The courses have proved very popular with busy veterinary professionals who no longer need to take time out to travel to face to face courses.
New "Web 2.0" technologies such as blogs, wikis and podcasting are increasingly being used by students to support their learning. The College has responded to these new developments by assisting students to record lectures for later download on MP3 players, and by piloting an automatic lecture recording system (Echo360). The eMedia Unit is involved in a prestigous Higher Education Academy funded project led by Leicester University (IMPALA) to develop podcasts of anatomical specimens. The RVC is also a lead partner in the WikiVet project, a collaborative initiative between the UK vet schools to develop a comprehensive online veterinary knowledge base, available to vets worldwide.
The RVC web site is now visited by over 500,000 individuals every year. It has become a central part of all College publicity including for research profiles, student recruitment and clinical marketting.
The College intranet is used on a daily basis by all staff and students. It is available on and off campus and is closely linked to other systems such as College timetables, Staff Directory and the VLE. Users can customise the interface to suit their needs and post their own messages.
The RVC uses Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) throughout the curriculum for self-directed study, scheduled formative quizzes and summative assessments. The eMedia Unit supports a range of tools including Wimba Create, Blackboard and QuestionMark Perception.
