Working with conductive materials such as play doh and electronics sensory circuits is a research project working to improve accessibility to programming and electronics. I will give an overview of the technology and share some demos which the audience can play with. I can provide all equipment and resources (including the play doh)

Have you ever had the situation that you set a task for students to collaborate in groups or teams in the classroom and then found it was difficult to capture, share and disseminate the results (digitally). This short presentation provides examples how the VLE and other tools can be used effectively for collaboration activities in the classroom.

Use of synchronous messaging tools for in-class communication can provide rapid feedback and knowledge consolidation, whilst also offering collaborative tools for creative forms of active learning. Technological barriers are minimal, so what is stopping wider adoption? This session will briefly outline preliminary research findings and illustrate emerging practice.

Talis Elevate enables social learning directly in the resources you use in teaching, be those documents, media, images or digitised content from the library. In this session, we will give an overview of the use of Talis Elevate on a large Foundation level course at the University of Sussex, led by Dr. Wendy Garnham, and the impact this has had on both physical and virtual learning spaces

Introducing an emerging model of curriculum design called specialism-based learning that encourages students to adopt "active learning" approaches to their studies.

This presentation will give an overview of what active learning strategies might be employed in online degree programmes, and then move on to the barriers and obstacles which often complicate the implementation of such activities, or entirely prevent these active learning strategies from appearing in the curriculum. These barriers include the role of the subject matter expert in the course design process, the length and delivery mode of the course, the geographical logistics of collaborative activities with an international cohort, and the complications of giving clear and concise instructions 'at a distance'.

In this session I will explore the use of off-the-shelf commercial digital games as tools for creating dynamic social interaction, providing assessment for learning and improving engagement. Examples will be provided from multiple domains, including health, social care, language learning and scientific research.

This workshop will be used to share our experience of active essay writing with foundation year students studying a psychology module. Rather than getting students to read first and write later, a practice which facilitates rather than reduces plagiarism, the active essay writing process encourages creativity and innovation. Students are encouraged to use technological tools to help them critically analyse the question, before imposing structure on their ideas and only then finding research evidence to support this. Not only are the literature searches more specific with this method but the originality of thought and level of analysis shown are significantly improved.

In this short workshop, we will be sharing our experience of encouraging outdoor learning using an activity which involves the use of a selection of freely available apps and a padlet wall. In this workshop, participants will be given an opportunity to venture outside and try some of the tools before returning to feed the results into a discussion around outdoor learning. We trialled this in a staff meeting of the Active Learning Network at Sussex University in November as part of a "Twalk" and hope to integrate some of the learning into our own teaching practice.

Storytelling can be a powerful way of enhancing teaching and increasing public engagement in outreach activities. It can also provide an interesting alternative for sharing research. People generally respond positively to stories and the greater nuance they can give to factual information. As a different means of engaging with people, digital storytelling can be used to share information or to design a type of assessment that will leverage students’ digital literacies and enhance their communication skills. This workshop will provide ideas for getting academic colleagues started with this form of digital expression which brings together voice, visuals and sound. It briefly outlines the pedagogical potential of digital storytelling, provides simple guidelines for producing a story, and is structured around a collaborative task that will involve creating a story on your laptop. Participants need to bring a mobile phone to create an audio recording for a voice-over, and a laptop to assemble a digital story using Adobe Spark. We recommend creating a free account for using Spark ahead of the workshop (https://spark.adobe.com/sp/). Taking part in the workshop will enable participants to: • develop their understanding of narrative as a support for teaching and outreach activities • generate a simple story and give it a digital form, working as a team • understand and evaluate the benefits and issues in producing digital stories.