Current Projects

CURLIEW is a Leverhulme-funded project studying the socio-political context of virtual worlds in higher education. Three PhD students have studied students’ experiences (Matt Mawer), pedagogical design (Gemma Tombs) and learner identity (Nicole Steils) in immersive virtual worlds. This project has now concluded and the final report will be available in the next few months.

New Connections is a JISC-funded collaborative project between Coventry University, BT Heritage and The National Archive (TNA) which aims to catalogue, digitise and develop a searchable online archive of almost half a million photographs, images, documents and correspondence assembled by BT over 165 years. Learning Innovation is supporting this project in developing problem-based learning scenarios from extensive archive resources. Partners from this project are blogging about its progress here.

Applied Research Fellowship - To What Extent are Occupational Therapists Equipped to Work in Entrepreneurial and Enterprising Ways in Mental Health: A Cross Cultural Study. Dr Katherine Wimpenny is involved in a strategic partnership with occupational therapy colleagues at The University of Cape Town (UCT) in a multi-faceted collaboration. The ARF will provide opportunity to expand on what is currently known about the development and honing of occupational therapists’ knowledge and skills for modern mental health practice. This pilot project will enable data to be captured from practitioners who trained at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Coventry University (CU).  The study will explore entrepreneurial and enterprising capabilities but also mental health from an international perspective. It will also provide opportunity to compare work contexts and pedagogic response. Research currently being conducted into entrepreneurialism within occupational therapy at UCT, will assist in supporting CU’s interest in this field, enabling a collaborative approach to undertaking further research and application for larger funding streams.

A qualitative research synthesis (QRS) funded by UK Occupational Therapy Research Foundation (UKOTRF) is examining the effectiveness of interventions used by occupational therapists within mental health. This QRS is the first international study of its time to give profile to the increasing range of qualitative research evidence being amassed, authored by occupational therapists, working within mental health. The synthesis will provide a bank of evidence to inform education, practice and the commissioning of occupational therapy users’ and carers’ perspectives regarding the effectiveness of occupational therapy. This will be via both the published studies and through development of a Steering Group of service user and carer representatives from across the West Midlands to oversee the project and its aims, and to share and discuss interim findings. Government priority areas clearly outline the requirement for service user and carer involvement in service development, evidencing practice and providing value for money, all of which are integral to this project.

Consultancy Work: We offer our development, research and evaluation skills at a very reasonable price and have worked for several institutions, including assisting with the Second Life “virtual deanery” at North Western Medical Deanery in Manchester. We have also done some work for several disciplines across Coventry University,  including promotional Second Life work for Occupational Therapy and learning scenarios for Engineering & Computing.

 

Completed Projects

Creative Gymnasium is an Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Awards for All funded project, which uses drama and the arts to raise levels of health and well-being in two of Coventry’s priority areas for health; work with the 50+ age group and sexual health amongst young people. Learning Innovation is working in collaboration with The Belgrade Theatre in developing an arts-based research framework that will measure the impact of the arts activity on the health of participants. The final report can be found here.

OCEP is a JISC-funded Open Content Employability Project supported by several partners across Coventry University (the project team can be found here). Approximately 10 educational Second Life machinima (videos filmed in a virtual world) have been developed, and Second Life objects are in the process of being made widely available for reuse. Additionally a “how to” guide is being written on how to develop machinima for learning modules.

PREVIEW focussed on delivering problem-based learning scenarios for students on healthcare courses via the virtual environment Second Life. Although the project end was in April 2009, it is still available for demos. Additionally, the widely known open source PIVOTE system by Daden Limited stemmed from the partner paramedic scenarios at St. George’s University of London. You can find out more about PREVIEW at its blog.

Virtual Librarian is a project funded by Coventry University, in which Learning Innovation supported the development of and evaluated the use of a ‘virtual librarian’ chatbot for the university library.