The University of Oviedo has approved the proposals of 120 Teaching Innovation projects conducted during academic year 2019-20, thus equalling the number of projects under the previous call for proposals. The results and experiences from these projects will be presented at the 13th Teaching Innovation Conference on 19 January 19, which will be held entirely online. The projects were focused on the implementation of new active teaching methods, such as gamification and encouraging active research, project/problem-based learning, flipped learning as well as adapting MOOC courses to online teaching.

Work was also done on creating and implementing innovative resources and educational programmes to promote the use of mobile devices in the classroom and collaboration between students and teachers - especially in the university environment but also at other educational levels, as well as group and individual tutoring work. The projects are part of the University of Oviedo's undergraduate and master's degree courses and university qualifications. They include collaboration with other Spanish universities through teaching coordination and virtual mobility.

Taken together, the projects presented involve a total of approximately 324 subjects, 657 members of teaching staff from 33 departments of the University of Oviedo and 15,397 students. This call for proposals has been followed by a very broad participation of other organisations, both educational and from other fields. Examples include projects with teaching staff and university students collaborating to develop teaching innovation with organisations, Asturian primary schools and secondary schools as well as other Spanish universities.

Best-rated project:

Project title: PINN-19-A-040: Adapting to an inverted class approach with social network support for the subject "Cultural Introduction to the English-speaking World"

Person responsible: Marta Ramón García

This project falls under the Humanities Department and aims to provide a solution to adapting the teaching of the subject "Cultural Introduction to the English-speaking World", which presents a number of structural difficulties for students. It is taught during the first term of the first year, entirely in English, and in the form of an overview of the history and culture of different English-speaking countries across five continents. Given this, a significant proportion of students find it difficult to follow the lectures, and are unable to prepare for the subject until the weeks prior to the final exam. This results in a low rate of attendance during the ordinary exam period, and a final pass-rate that is often below 50%. The project aims to make the subject more accessible by supporting it in two main areas: on the one hand, by extending the inverted classroom approach (flipped classroom) for practical sessions to lectures; and, on the other hand, by adding a networked learning component via Twitter and Instagram accounts.

This adaptation can be extrapolated to other subjects, which is why its methodology and implementation were assessed as the best proposal this year.

Second best-rated:

*In this call for proposals there was a tie in the evaluation of the reports, leading to two second-placed projects.

Project title: PINN-19-A-074  Creating audiovisual materials for health education and disseminating concepts in haematology and haemotherapy

Person responsible: Ana Pilar González Rodríguez

This project falls under the Medicine Department and is aimed at promoting better understanding of haematological pathology by supporting 5th-year medical students during clinical practice for the subject "Pathology of Blood and Haematopoietic Organs", by developing a range of audiovisual materials aimed at promoting the population's health education.

This project has a high component of coordination and collaboration between various health professionals, and through which students are guided in their learning, based on different audiovisual materials in a range of formats to promote health education and information for patients through a course purposely created under Uniovi's Virtual Campus.

It has also been possible to facilitate students' acquisition of knowledge that will help them resolve the problems they have to face in the future, and will also provide the Haematology Service with various audiovisual materials to improve health education among the population and patient associations, thus encouraging greater interaction with professionals involved in the process of caring for them.

Project title: PINN-19-B-003: Adapting the English language "Autopsy" MOOC course on the UNIOVIX platform (Open edX)

Person responsible: Iván Fernández Vega

This project forms part of the medical-surgical sciences department and is a Type-B project - a continuation of an initial project that won first place in last year's assessments.

Over the past year, the team has designed, created and delivered the world's first MOOC course on clinical autopsy, using the Uniovix platform. The course was divided into 5 units, had a team of 10 professionals (5 project members and 5 professional MOOC experts from the University of Oviedo), and include over 150 minutes of videos (spread across guides, lessons and materials) all of which were also accessible through subtitles and transcription of the text. Two live video lectures were run and provided all the theory content in PDF documents. It also used 6 forums to drive forward the syllabus. The MOOC ran for 6 weeks, with 1271 students from 25 different countries enrolling. Therefore, for this 2019 call for proposals, this is continuing, with an English language version to reach a broader audience.

Third best-rated project:

Project title: PINN-19-A-050: Promoting Cooperative Action-Research in Statistical Education

Person responsible: Eduardo González Cabañes

This project comes under the Legal-Social Sciences department, and includes a high number of lecturers. One of its main objectives has been to promote collaboration between these University of Oviedo teaching staff who - whether because of their teaching or research positions - are interested in running innovation or research projects in statistical education.

For this purpose, a communication area has been set up using email, virtual campus, and Google Docs shared documents, where teachers can share with their colleagues proposals to participate flexibly in the following activities: 1) focus groups, where views are shared on problems related to statistical education and potential proposals for action or research; 2) working teams, involving more intense relations to develop specific proposals; 3) validation of proposals developed by working teams across different classes of colleagues; and 4) dissemination of results via scientific publications or other media. The results suggest that these collaboration efforts helped generate ideas for innovation and research in statistical education; enable our involvement and motivation in these activities; and, ultimately, improve student learning.