Dr Abigail Rickard is an Associate Professor and Head of Biology at the University of Greenwich.
Dr Rickard joined the University of Greenwich in April 2011 and has been using ADInstruments teaching equipment since 2013.
Here Abigail shares why Lt was a key factor in making the transition to online teaching during the pandemic possible.
Support
“The fantastic thing about Lt is that there is a connected community of teachers using it from a variety of organizations around the world. There are regular events called Lt Brain Trust, where users like myself can meet online or, where possible, in person. We share our positive experiences, frustrations, and teaching ideas. It's an event where educators can support one another.
In addition, the ADInstruments response to the pandemic was wonderful - the speed at which customer support staff were getting back to me was very welcome at what was an incredibly stressful time.”
Brain Trust attendees in discussion.
Intuitiveness
“Like many other educators, we had to move our labs online at a very short notice. At the time, I was also mentoring a new colleague who was in her first ever teaching post and was tasked with running a virtual lab in just one week's time!
I believe that the intuitiveness of the Lt platform is what allowed me to help her get up to speed with using Lt, so that she could actually deliver that lab in a very short space of time. We were pleasantly surprised to find that students returned very positive enagagement and feedback for those sessions."
Engagement
“I was very pleased to see that students stated they could see how the theory I was teaching in the lectures directly connected to the virtual lab work. Of course, students recognized that it was more difficult to grasp the concepts of practical sessions virtually than in-person, and their feedback reflected this. But overall, our students were fantastic and were able to enjoy the lab sessions, with many saying that the labs were really fun to work through!"
Time
“Before the pandemic, students completed labs in groups and submitted their lab reports as a group. As all students now had to work from home individually and submit individual reports, my marking would have tripled or even quadrupled in size! Lt's auto-mark feature was a massive time-saver!
I was very happy that students could get a really comprehensive lab session with lots of background information provided for them, knowing that I would not have to spend all my hours marking!”
Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash
Dr Abigail Rickard
Associate Professor and Head of Biology
University of Greenwich, London
Dr Rickard joined the University of Greenwich in April 2011 as a Lecturer in Biomedical Science, where she is currently pursuing her research interest in the safety of novel pharmaceutical agents and their effects on cardiac electrophysiology. Dr Rickard has been using ADInstruments teaching tools since 2013.
You can view Abigail's full talk at Lt Brain Trust for Europe here.
