Adeena's journey drives university digital team's award success

Working in partnership with dietetics academics, the University's team for fostering the use of digital in educational delivery has won an industry award by highlighting a patient's story through an innovative e-learning tool.

Digital Innovation for Creativity in Education (DICE) won the 2024 Digital Education Awards' Product of the Year award for 'Adeena’s Story', a case study for a dietetics service user in the West Midlands. This gave an overview of the patient's life and background before engaging students in discussion of a number of learning objectives.

Bringing the case study to life, the tool encouraged student engagement and provoked questions on issues including her medical conditions, disease management, support networks, and lifestyle choices.

Adeena, who works at University College Birmingham as a lecturer in health and social care, was diagnosed with Coeliac’s Disease and Type 1 Diabetes, and was eager to help nurture students’ learning in an innovative and unique manner: "The whole experience was fantastic," she said.

"From the planning, setting dates and the questioning, I was never made to feel uncomfortable or anxious. The whole team who supported this project did an amazing job."

Dietetics lecturer Megan Bridger felt that the tool allowed students to approach a real-life case from the perspective of a practitioner, and gain a more in-depth understanding of their career choice than would be accessible through theoretical study exclusively: "It’s more reflective of real-world practice, because you have a real person talking in real time about their experience, which is what they’re going to have to do on placement and when they qualify: follow a real person's conversation," she explained.

"I certainly have found that the students have had more questions and we've been able to discuss other topics off the back of the case study."

After collaborative work from DICE digital multimedia developer Ossie Goldhill, junior mulitmedia developer Gemma Woolley, and Dietetics lecturer Kathleen Hennessy-Priest, "Adeena's Story" won first place in the Product of the Year category at the Digital Education Awards.

Ossie was thrilled to see their labours pay dividends: “This really is a team effort, and I’m immensely proud that all our hard work has been recognised formally,” he said.

Looking to replicate the success of their work, Gemma was optimistic that the case study can be used as a template to drive future student achievement: “It's been highly rewarding to see the educational benefit of this project," she said.

"We already have similar case studies lined up with other service users and I look forward to seeing how our visual story telling will further positively impact the student learning experience.”