Over the summer members of the StudentShapers programme have helped create innovative new placement experiences for fellow Medicine students.

Three Year 5 MBBS students have been appointed to roles with the Department of Primary Care Education , giving 2 hours a week of their time to influencing and help develop teaching innovation projects across the Faculty of Medicine. The students are taking part in their capacity as 'StudentShapers'.

The StudentShapers project provides a hub for staff and students to explore opportunities to work together to transform learning and teaching at the College.

The partnership will enhance the learning experience by fostering collaboration, with the end results being incorporated back into students’ curriculum. Students will be provided with financial support and expert advice to support them taking part in research and ensure projects have as high an impact as possible.

Dr Mike Streule, Director of StudentShapers, said: ""

Owning the classroom

The F-Zero course - Development of new longitudinal clerkship in the final year
This new project is the first fully integrated clerkship across primary and secondary care lasting a complete academic year in the UK.
The StudentShapers were allocated a project; for example, a fundamental aspect to the course is the delivery of weekly centralised tutorials in the F-Zero course. The students can then take ownership over 6-10 of these tutorials. The students are undertaking fact-finding research, including engaging with newly qualified doctors, to understand where the course needs improvement in the final year. The StudentShapers will then have the resources and support to design tutorials addressing these specific areas, allowing for true student led design and production.
StudentShapers will be attending and contributing to course design meetings internally and externally with stakeholders and wider faculty. The StudentShaper will also be involved in the development of the course design, curriculum, stakeholder engagement, assessment planning, pastoral support design, evaluation and research of the new course.

Dr Arti Maini

A help to the local community

Social Accountability
We have already piloted a “Community Action Project” for our year 3 students, who spend 10 weeks in a community medicine placement. Here they carry out a formative assessment, whereby they identify a need within their local population, carry out a needs assessment and design, deliver and evaluate an intervention to address this need.

The StudentShaper will be working closely alongside the Social Accountability Teaching Fellow, and will be involved in a specific project area which allows them to take ownership of the project and lead to a tangible output. For example, the Community Action Project as it is rolled out to the whole academic year, needs to have its evaluation process considered. The StudentShaper can help codesign and co-develop the evaluative framework, carrying out the evaluation and being involved in the planning of the course delivery.

Dr Christine Douglass

Introducing digital

Digital Learning

The Department has courses within Primary Care across years 1,2,3,5 and 6 of the medical school. These courses involve centralised teaching in various forms. One of the aims of the department is to increase the use of technology-enhanced learning within our courses. As these projects expand, a StudentShaper will provide us with their experience of using various digital platforms and together co-design these digital tools to ensure they are easy to use for students and appropriately designed. We envisage the Student Shaper to help us with the design of these platforms and tools, evaluation and research within these projects.

Gideon Shimshon