Innovations Lab
We aim to transform how people learn through the best combination of innovative technologies, learning science, and health science.
In this time of rapid change in technology, education and healthcare, very few people have the knowledge and skills to be experts in it all. To create significant impact, we must bring divergent areas together into a singular effort and focus. The TEE Innovations Lab is designed to bring these expert areas together as a team with specific goals, and focus on making significant enhancements in how we develop and engage our community of learners in the UCSF Bridges Curriculum.
We bring together innovative technologies for teaching and learning, world class educators and scientists, and the best practices in creativity and design thinking to make significant progress in how we educate our learners. Members of the TEE Innovations Lab collaborate as a team on specific projects using innovative technologies, design strategies, prototyping, and research to create positive impact in the UCSF Bridges Curriculum. For more information, contact Christian Burke, Technology Innovations Team Director.
TEE Innovations Lab Current Projects
VR for Anatomy
Project: Dr. Derek Harmon and Dr. Kimberly Topp
This effort aims to enhance our excellent anatomy education program in the UCSF Bridges curriculum with Virtual Reality for anatomy lessons. First year medical students have the opportunity to supplement their time spent in our real world anatomy lab with practice time in a Virtual Reality anatomy lab. Each lesson in VR is blended with the student’s current work in the anatomy curriculum and designed to support the lessons. Virtual Reality offers learners the chance to practice anatomy in an immersive learning environment, shows the anatomy in three dimensions, and allows the learners to interact with virtual anatomy structures in ways that aren’t possible in the traditional lab.
Read the article featuring this video "How VR is Revolutionizing the Way Future Doctors are Learning About Our Bodies."
Live Video in Education
UCSF is a worldwide enterprise that attracts top researchers, educators and clinicians across many locations with distributed people. This innovation project aims to create an easier method for educators to teach live sessions across the UCSF Bridges curriculum from distributed locations using Zoom. We guide and develop educators so they can live stream high quality educational sessions from their location into UCSF lecture halls, small groups, and also guide clinics as they live stream their educational sessions to other clinics, labs, and locations.
Project 1: Connecting our SF and Fresno students - Dr. Heidi Kirsch
Students need to travel as they go to different clinical rotations, but how do we solve the problem of connecting students outside of the bay area to those in San Francisco? How can our remote students continue to learn from our expert educators across various satellite locations? This project uses Zoom to connect UCSF clerkship students currently in clinical rotation at Fresno with their peers and faculty in San Francisco. Each week the faculty give a talk on Foundational Sciences, in which all clerkship students can participate from pre-arranged locations.
Project 2: Virtual visits and experiences for our students - Dr. Peter Chin-Hong and Dr. Brian Schwartz
It's impossible to fit 150 students in a microbiology lab and give them a glimpse of what an infectious disease doctor does on a regular day. With an operator using Zoom and an iPad, this experience is now achievable! The iPad camera operator trails our faculty members as they walk through and discuss the microbiology lab. Students, gathered in a lecture hall elsewhere, watch & participate remotely. This is a live virtual visit where students can ask questions as the faculty zoom in on the petri dishes and describe in detail what goes on in a microbiology lab.
