Sheetal Kavia has worked within the eLearning Unit since 2007 in various roles. Her main focus of work currently is managing the delivery of online courses. She has also got vast experience in the creation and use of virtual scenarios within the curriculum. She also has project managed a number of national, and international funded projects along with the implementation of new technologies within the institution.
Sheetal Kavia first started working within the eLearning Unit in 2007 as an eLearning technologist and has since developed and progressed in her role as the Digital Education Manger within the eLearning Unit, part of the Centre for Technology in Education.
Her main focus of work currently is working with academics to manage the development of new online and blended courses; including Massive Open Online Courses, Short courses, Continuing Professional Development course and credit-bearing courses.
Sheetal has over 10 years of experience in the implementation of virtual scenarios for teaching and training. This started with the Time Higher Education (THE) award winning project funded by JISC called PREVIEW with Coventry University. The project explored and delivered virtual scenarios through a virtual world specifically for the paramedic’s course. This later was used to deliver scenarios for psychiatry and medicine at St George’s. During this period, she was also part of a team that delivered an accredited virtual patient course for staff at St George's and have been invited to deliver virtual patient authoring workshops worldwide.
Sheetal has successfully managed a number of funded projects around the use of virtual scenarios, the national project called G4.5 which was a project that produced and delivered medical law and ethics virtual scenarios as part of the curriculum at St George’s, Leeds University, Sheffield University and other medical school within the UK. Through the success of developing and using virtual scenarios, Sheetal was also part of a number of funded international projects like ePBnet, CROESUS, TAME and Widening Access to Virtual Educational Scenario (WAVES) project and she is now leading the WAVES network as an output from the now completed project.
The most recent project which she managed was the Erasmus+ funded CLUEDUP project led by Aristotle University and partnered with Masaryk University. This project explored the development and trial of Escape Room scenarios for collaborative learning activities within the medical curriculum. The successful implementation of this project has led to other courses within the university adopting the approach for their own small group teaching scenarios.
Sheetal has also managed new initiatives within the university, such as setting up the App Centre where all mobile application development projects would be managed and reviewed. She has more recently managing the implementation of the student voice platform across the university for all students called Unitu.