Students as Trainers is a Fusion-funded pilot project run by the Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL), which sees students and academics reverse roles.
Students deliver workshops to help lecturers who have asked for support with using digital and social media tools. It鈥檚 a win-win situation, with students developing their skills in delivering training and academics growing in confidence to use new found digital skills.
Physiotherapy Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Dr. Judith A. Chapman said: 鈥淢y student trainer, Ciayi, was absolutely brilliant. I was really encouraged that I could be exposed to so much in such a short time. I had her 100% attention for a whole hour. It wasn鈥檛 an imposition to her; she was willing to do it and she showed me lots of things that I wasn鈥檛 even aware of.鈥
Sessions ran throughout the summer term and topics included:
- Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
- Social media such as Facebook and Twitter
- Some of the tools in the TEL toolkit
- Digital skills such as image and file manipulation, digital profile privacy etc
- Using smartphones and tablets
- Using PCs and Macs.
MBA students Ciayi Lim found the experience challenging, but hugely rewarding.
鈥淭eaching an academic was really challenging for me,鈥 she explained, 鈥渂ecause in Asian culture teachers are extremely respected and have a much higher status than their students. So it was breaking the status quo. I tried to create tailor-made packages for each academic-student, according to individual needs. That鈥檚 what I think I gained most from the scheme 鈥 understanding what different people need from different angles.鈥
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