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Dr Luke Woodham

Head of e-Learning Unit/Lecturer in Technology-Enhanced Learning
Head of the eLearning Unit, supporting development of TEL resources.

I am the Head of the eLearning Unit and a lecturer in technology-enhanced learning, part of the Centre for Technology in Education. In this role I work to support many of the technology-enhanced learning activities that take place within St George's as part of St George's provisions for taught programmes, professional education and as part of externally funded educational and research projects.

I serve on a number of committees within St George's, and have presented the work done at St George's at several local and international conferences, included invited talks, workshops and plenary presentations. I am a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE having applied through St George's SHINE programme in 2020, and successfully defended my doctoral thesis at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden in March 2020, entitled "Exploring the impact of virtual patient design: Medical students' small group learning around medical error".

I have been part of the eLearning Unit at St George's since 2008, having previously worked as a database developer, onsite engineer and as an IT security audit consultant.

Since joining St George's and working the higher education sector I have worked on many grant funded projects, particularly related to the use of virtual patients for delivering medical and healthcare education in blended settings, and the use of data standards in education. These include the JISC-funded PREVIEW project, which explored the use of virtual patients in the virtual world Second Life, and the eViP project to develop a shared referatory of virtual patient resources from multiple institutions across Europe. More recently, I chaired the Technical Reference Group of the EC Erasmus+ funded Widening Access to Virtual Educational Scenarios (WAVES) project and was responsible for the evaluation strategies of the EC Erasmus+ funded Training Against Medical Error (TAME) and the EC Tempus funded ePBLNet projects.

I was also a member of the project team for the EC Erasmus+ funded MEDCIN project which used data standards to describe and compare outcome-based medical curricula. I have also been a core project team member of the NIHR funded EFFIP project which was developed in the Institute of Population Health and is trialling a resource for carers of those with Psychosis called COPe-Support.

Since 2015 I have supported and worked on the delivery of St George's FutureLearn courses. These courses cover a range of subjects including Genomic medicine, organ donation, virtual scenarios and clinical empathy, and are also used as part of taught programmes within St George's. I was also involved in the initial implementation of the MyProgress ePortfolio system at St George's.

For 2021 I am the chair of the Steering Committee at the data standards organisation MedBiquitous, and was an invited member of the Technical Steering Committee there from 2014-2019. I am a member of the working group that developed the ANSI/MEDBIQ VP.10.1-2010 MedBiquitous Virtual Patient standard, and participated in the Curriculum Inventory and Learning experience working groups at MedBiquitous.

I peer review for several journals, including the Journal of Medical Internet Research, BMC Medical Education, British Journal of Educational Technology and BMJ Open. I am an Associate Member of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and am the institutional representative for St George's.

In 2020 I achieved Senior Fellowship status of AdvanceHE through the St George's SHINE programme, and successfully defended my doctoral thesis at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden in March 2020, entitled "Exploring the impact of virtual patient design: Medical students' small group learning around medical error".

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to develop my research profile through participation in both local and international projects, and through the development of my doctoral thesis, which I will defend in 2020.

My research interests are in technology-enhanced learning, and specifically the use of virtual scenarios as educational tools in blended settings. I have also explored the use of data standards in medical education, and the development of MOOCs in medicine and healthcare.

Jivram T, Kavia S, Poulton E, Hernandez AS, Woodham LA and Poulton T (2021) The Development of a Virtual World Problem-Based Learning Tutorial and Comparison With Interactive Text-Based Tutorials. Front. Digit. Health 3:611813. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2021.611813

Sin J,  Elkes J,  Batchelor R,  Henderson C,  Gillard S,  Woodham LA,  Chen T,  Aden A,  Cornelius V. Mental health and caregiving experiences of family carers supporting people with psychosis. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 2021 30; e3-

Sin J,  Henderson C,  Cornelius V,  Chen T,  Elkes J,  Woodham LA,  Hernandez AS,  Spence-Polin D,  Batchelor R,  Gillard S. COPe-support-a multi-component digital intervention for family carers for people affected by psychosis: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry 2020 20;1 129-

Karolyi, M., Komenda, M., Woodham, L., Ščavnický, J., Vaitsis, C., Spachos, D. (2020) Medical curriculum standards: Towards relational database transformation. Health and Technology. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-020-00409-6

Sin J, Woodham LA, Henderson , Claire, Williams E, Sesé Hernández A, Gillard S. (2019) Usability evaluation of an eHealth intervention for family carers of individuals affected by psychosis: A mixed-method study. Digital Health. 5:205520761987114. 

Sin J, Henderson C, Woodham LA, Sesé Hernández A, Gillard S. (2019) A Multicomponent eHealth Intervention for Family Carers for People Affected by Psychosis: A Coproduced Design and Build Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 21(8):e14374. 

Woodham LA, Round J, Stenfors T, Bujacz A, Karlgren K, Jivram T, et al. (2019) Virtual patients designed for training against medical error: Exploring the impact of decision-making on learner motivation. PLoS One. 14(4):1–21. 

Kononowicz AA, Woodham LA, Edelbring S, Stathakarou N, Davies D, Saxena N, et al. (2019) Virtual Patient Simulations in Health Professions Education: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis by the Digital Health Education Collaboration. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 21(7):e14676. 

Kononowicz AA, Woodham L, Kavia S. (2017) The different dimensions of widening access to virtual scenarios in the WAVES project. e-mentor. 3:47–54. 

Vaitsis C, Spachos D, Karolyi M, Woodham L, Zary N, Bamidis P, et al. (2017) Standardization in medical education: review, collection and selection of standards to address technical and educational aspects in outcome-based medical education. MEFANET Journal. 5(1):28–39.

M. Komenda, M. Karolyi, C. Vaitsis, D. Spachos and L. Woodham, "A Pilot Medical Curriculum Analysis and Visualization According to Medbiquitous Standards," 2017 IEEE 30th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS), Thessaloniki, 2017, pp. 144-149.

Kononowicz AA, Woodham L, Georg C, Edelbring S, Stathakarou N, Davies D, et al. (2016) Virtual patient simulations for health professional education. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Woodham LA, Poulton E, Jivram T, Kavia S, Sese Hernandez A, Sahakian CS, et al. (2017) Evaluation of student and tutor response to the simultaneous implementation of a new PBL curriculum in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, based on the medical curriculum of St George’s, University of London. MEFANET Journal. 5(1):19-27. 

Woodham LA, Ellaway RH, Round J, Vaughan S, Poulton T, & Zary N. (2015). Medical Student and Tutor Perceptions of Video Versus Text in an Interactive Online Virtual Patient for Problem-Based Learning: A Pilot Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research17(6):e151.  

Rampling J, O’Brien A, Hindhaugh K, Woodham L, Kavia S. (2012). Use of an online virtual environment in psychiatric problem-based learning. The Psychiatrist, 36:391-396 

Kononowicz AA, Zary N, Davies D, Heid J, Woodham L, & Hege I. (2011). Push and pull models to manage patient consent and licensing of multimedia resources in digital repositories for case-based reasoning. Studies in health technology and informatics, 169:203-7.

Mitsopoulou E., Taibi, D.; Giordano, D., Dietze, S., Yu, HQ, Bamidis, P., Bratsas, C., Woodham, L. (2011). Connecting medical educational resources to the Linked Data cloud: the mEducator RDF Schema, store and API. In: Linked Learning 2011: 1st International Workshop on eLearning Approaches for the Linked Data Age, 8th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2011), 29 May 2011, Heraklion, Greece.

Conradi E, Kavia S, Burden D, Rice A, Woodham L, Beaumont C, Savin-Baden M, Poulton T. (2009). Virtual patients in a virtual world : Training paramedic students for practice. Medical Teacher31(8): 713-720. 

Kononowicz AA, Heid J, Donkers J, Hege I, Woodham L, Zary N. (2009). Development and Validation of Strategies to Test for Interoperability of Virtual Patients. Studies in health technology and informatics, 150:185-189. 

Zary N, Hege I, Heid J, Woodham L, Donkers J. (2009). Enabling Interoperability, Accessibility and Reusability of Virtual Patients across Europe – Design and Implementation. Studies in health technology and informatics, 150:826-830. 

I contribute to teaching related to the use of technology-enhanced learning, contributing sessions around general principles, suitable tools and approaches and trends in the field. These sessions are provided as part of a number of taught postgraduate programmes, as well as in staff development sessions for both university and NHS trust staff.

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