Elevating scenario-based learning through Virtual Reality immersive wall suites

On 10 June 2025, myself, Cherylene Camps, Senior Lecturer in Paramedicine and Godson Uma, Digital Curriculum Support and Developer delivered the session 'Elevating scenario-based learning through Virtual Reality immersive wall suites', to NTU colleagues for the School of Social Sciences Showcase 2025 Day 2.  The session was well-received and created much rich discussion and ideas.  The two students who recently qualified from their BSc paramedicine course, that shared their experiences was a particular standout - so I am glad that I suggested this so the audience could hear their views directly and better represent their perspectives.  Our presentation is below.

NTU researcher - "#belonging at the NTU Social Sciences Showcase today.  Privileged to see the incredible work on...and the innovative VR development from Daniel Scott-Purdy and his team."

Senior Lecturer, Course Lead for the BA (Hons) Childhood and Education Studies (online) top-up degree, Nottingham Institute of Education - "I am so impressed by the incredible work you are engaged in and would be keen to learn more.  During the 2024/25 School Showcase event, I had the great pleasure of chairing a session led by Daniel Scott-Purdy and colleagues from IHAP.  The session (focused on immersive learning) was brought to life through some outstanding examples and brief demonstrations of how the immersion suite works in practice.  It was further enhanced through the contributions by students who had used the suite for practical exercises.  The team were passionate about this work and it was evident the students and staff had gained a great deal from this exciting learning resource facilitated through a team of experienced development staff who had bought the practical exercises to life.  A quintessential feature of the presentation was the teams recognition of areas for growth in the use of these resources.  The excitement, enthusiasm and expert knowledge of digital learning resources was bought to life by a team who are evidently hyper-focused on how we can work smarter through the use of digital technologies.  There are a wealth of opportunities for using such resources across different programmes and Daniel was gracious (both in the presentation and afterwards) in discussing ways in which the Childhood team might employ such tools." 

 

Reviewing a bit of immersive education literature

This is my output of the third formative assessment of my Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE).  Review of 2 research papers, well book chapters in my case.  Following my teaching observation in April and teaching philosophy in January.

I realise I am a bit over the word count, which was set at 1200 words, but that is because I put a lot of time and effort into reading the chapters to be better informed, and I wanted this to be a source of information for later use.  There's further potential for criticality but I have to stop somewhere, it's only for a formative assessment.  Just means there's more appetite for further reading.

I received the following overall feedback.

"Daniel, this is excellent.  You’ve taken a topic that is current to the sector, relevant to your school, and challenging!  It’s a very impressive response.

Strengths

• The criticality you offer is excellence, speaking to the limitations of the articles not only in what they offer but sensitively to the context of your practice.
• The use of extended literature is something that you will be able to draw upon in your future assignments, including the written submission and professional conversation.

Areas for development

• You’ve already identified your biggest challenge – keeping to the word count.  As valuable as your insights are, I really want to stress how great this piece is!, you also need keep within the boundaries of the assignment.  You’re not penalised here but you could be further on.

An excellent submission and a real pleasure to read.

Please get in touch if you want to discuss this further."

Building a picture of H5P usage and application

For one of this year's IHAP Digital Learning Strategy objectives, I produced the following report to help build a picture of H5P usage and application across our department, and to support further objectives to increase scaffolded online asynchronous learning in our courses and modules.

This was planned to be discussed with my line manager, the Head of Department, to plan how we can take the findings forward and promote the report further.  Through a separate one to one meeting with the Principal Lecturer in Paramedicine, in a ad hoc manner, I showed the report which spurred on enthusiastic conversations on it's potential.  He said they would discuss this with the Head to invite me to a future Senior Leadership Team meeting to walkthrough and discuss.  However in my catch up later on the same day with the Head, she also agreed and invited me to attend the SLT meeting on 24 April.

In the meeting on 24 April I shared the original non-anonymised report, which enabled SLT to identify their staff and their practice.  However, I have since anonymised it (below) to share widely across the department through various committee meetings.  The report was very well-received by SLT and we had much insightful discussions, such as confirming the following outcomes:

• 1.  Focus on H5P
• Focus promotion and support on specific content types, interactive learning and presentation of information.
• Plan and promote further my successful and impactful H5P Retreat workshops.
• Discussed the need for conducting more module learning room audits.
• 2.  Scope out training needs on interactive learning tools such as Padlet and underutilised Microsoft Office (curate self-service resources and bespoke workshops).
• Consideration for Principal Lecturers on how they can get lecturers to come to us.  Ensuring accountability through their course and team meetings and one to ones.
• 3.  Start with MSc Nursing - we concluded the meeting my agreeing to meet to discuss the following on 22 May, utilising our exemplar H5P work and NOW web pages:
• What we want as a minimum in each module.
• What modules we review first in terms of digital resources.
• Think about a template to aid Module leaders.