Your Project Ideas

Augmented Reality Eye Disease Vision and Model Eye

Description

I would like to create an application for the Apple store and for the Google Play store. This app would use augmented reality to do highlight the anatomy of the eye. This would be used by consultants when communicating with patients to show what the eye looks like. Therefore, diminishing the use for plastic model eyes. I would like there to be a second-tier level of content knowledge that the consultants can use when teaching masters students at the Institute of Ophthalmology (IoO). This will be useful when teaching remote labs, lectures or tutes. It would be fantastic if we could create a way to have a shared eye model for the lab, lecture or tute. You login into a 'classroom' with a number and then you can watch the consultant or student dissect the eye and narrate the dissection over Zoom, this would be great to for patients having remove consultations as telemedicine rapidly develops. The second part of the app is using more augmented reality to show what your vision looks like when you have certain eye diseases. This would be great for carers of patients to develop empathy and create a more holistic relationship. I work closely with the IoO and Moorfields Eye Hospital so getting content knowledge is the easy part. Building the app confuses me greatly. 

Marcus, Institute of Ophthalmology

Games Workshop 🏆🏆🏆

Description

The 'Games Workshop' is an online workshop to help students and teachers to develop choice-based games for teaching and learning. Choice-based games are well suited to exploring ethical dilemmas and complex interactions from different points of view. The workshop will allow participants to develop prototype games and introduce them to the concept of standard patterns for choice-based games. I am hoping that the project will help me to refine and develop the Games Workshop and particularly explore how making games can improve understanding and develop empathy.

Ellie, School of Pharmacy

Play the game

Camera on / Camera off

Description

In this bold, terrifying new apocalyptic world where all communication happens through video conferencing, this brings with it new stresses and strains related to being “on camera” in meetings.

Presenters may want you to have your camera on during meetings, while you may struggle with the focus that it puts on you or not want people to see how terrible you look today (a common problem for me, particularly in the early morning) or how messy your room is or any other of a myriad of problems (no camera, poor internet connection). From the presenter’s perspective it can be off-putting to be presenting with no feedback.

Similarly, there are issues with having microphones on all the time (noise but also privacy of others in the same room/flat/house).

The aim of this project is to come up with some tools and resources to help people manage this by providing other visual feedback – possibly in the form of other real-time feedback mechanisms (a good example of a basic version of this is the “hands up” flag in Teams/Zoom), camera filtering/replacement tools etc.

Owain, RITS

Coffee Roulette

Description

If you answered yes to any of those questions, let's get together and build a random connection tool and let's make the silos more porous!

The basic idea: A UCL social network that matches its members for short social calls with the aim of providing new connections, new ideas and (hopefully!) interesting conversations with UCL people they might not otherwise meet. 

This project is an example of what happens when you have an idea but you don't take action: a colleague and I had this idea 7 years ago, but due to lack of resources we weren't able to take it further at the time. Over the years others have come up with the same idea and built commercial platforms that are offering some of the functionality we originally envisioned. The fact that these commercial entities exist provides evidence that the idea in itself was a good one.

Our project would have university specific profile fields and be open only to members of the UCL community.

Janina/David, ISD

Mental Health Support Training

Description

In the dark days of 2020 staff and students are under more external pressures than ever before. The goal of this project is to generate a self-directed training course for managers or supervisors who have responsibility for the well-being of staff (or students) to help them effectively support those in their charge. UCL has a guide for managers in the form of a PDF 

(https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/sites/human-resources/files/mh_guidance.pdf) and this project would aim to convert this material into a short course, possibly with video, to help managers/supervisors have the appropriate discussions if someone is struggling and refer staff/students on to occupational health/ wellbeing@ucl as appropriate.

Owain, RITS

Virtual Quad

Description

We have Moodle courses, online library services and virtual departmental common rooms. What we haven't got is a space that provides the 'functionality' of our Quad, our Cloisters and our various bars and coffee hangouts where we can randomly gather for chats and spontaneous events regardless of whether we are academic staff, students, researchers or support staff. Moving online in the way we did we have lost the facility to people watch between classes, random conversations in corridors and spontaneous connections at events and festivals. It would be great to build an online space that fills this gap.

One problem with our existing platforms (Teams, Zoom, Collaborate, etc) is that they are available only to sub-groups of the university and therefore exclude anyone not in a specific bubble. The other problem is that dominant people can 'hog' the conversation and quieter types struggle to make their voices heard. - Surely we can do better than that? 

Janina, ISD

Mini Course: Stop the virus. Spread the knowledge

Description

During the pandemic, many students have been exposed to misinformation about COVID-19 and many have found it difficult to decide what information about the virus and vaccines is true. However, this increase in awareness of infectious diseases can be used to our advantage. A simple course can be developed to inform students about the basics of PPE, COVID-19, vaccines and other infectious diseases including STIs to make UCL's student body more biologically responsible. 

Our innovation would mitigate disease spread exacerbated by fake news while building on the current interest in public health, by teaching students about COVID-19, STIs, and other related issues. This will be achieved by developing a UCL Moodle mini-course with well-illustrated online teaching materials and quizzes.

Maria, Biosciences

Blackboard Ad Reel

Description

When we run virtual classroom session sin Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, there is often silence for up to 15 minutes after the virtual room opens, but before the teaching starts. We have tested showing images and playing music in this time, as a way to fill the void, reassure participants that they have found the correct room, and to test particpants' ability to receive audio and video.

In a cinema, the time between entering the auditorium and the beginning fo the main feature is filled by the "ad reel", which combines advertising, trailers for future events, and other messages relevant to the audience. We could replicate that kind of function for optional use before teaching sessions.

Matthew, Institute of Health Informatics

Sharing desktops in UCL Virtual Cluster rooms

Description

Currently, if an instructor or learner using a virtual cluster room wish to share screens they must use collaborate, zoom, or teams. These each offer different functionality and none approach the core funcitonality that you want of a cluster room: the idea of a student raising their hand and an instructor or TA simply walking up and looking over their shouldr at their work (or conversely, a student approach the instructor's machine to look at something). A nice approach might be if participants could see a virtual gallery of open desktops in the virtual cluster and choose one to look at. Can this idea be implemented in a simple way? Does such a solution already exist? What issues might this raise?

Jim, ISD

Let's create a virtual study environment!
(Workshop Session)

Description

Studying remotely can be lonely and demotivating. How can we harness the power of digital connection to replicate the feel of a library, student centre, or coffee shop? We tend to turn to study and music live streams to help us feel supported and connected in their absence. 

We propose a project to tackle this opportunity, beginning with brainstorming some features that could be useful to create an immersive, connected digital study experience (live stream views of a library, live audio of a library, ASMR/lo-fi music for concentration, chat with fellow students, 24/7 connectivity across timezones, the ability to chat with support staff at UCL, tutoring, pomodoro timers, mindfulness sessions, study buddies, digital resources etc.). We can then brainstorm platforms and methods to host our digital study experience, be it via a custom-built online platform, or even through Microsoft Teams. How many students could we support and connect at the same time?

Shaleila and Roos, UCLIC