'Transport Systems: Global Issues and Future Innovations' wins the MEDEA Awards 2019
‘Transport Systems: Global Issues and Future Innovations’ has won the MEDEA Award for Professionally Produced Educational Media for its innovative use of Video at an awards ceremony in Leuven Town Hall on 5 June 2019. The online course was created to recruit high-calibre students to masters’ programmes from the Institute for Transport Studies(ITS) at the University of Leeds. The award winning course features a range of innovative media aiming to provide an engaging, interactive, stimulating and social learning experience.
The aim of the MEDEA Awards is to encourage innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. The awards open to nominations from Europe and beyond, recognise and promote excellence in the production and pedagogical design of media-rich learning productions, resources, processes and services.
Mathy Vanbuel, chair of the MEDEA Awards Judging Committee said: “Video is increasingly used in innovative and creative ways to support online courses. The time when talking heads dominated online courses’ screens is over. Online courses’ videos have a high production quality, they engage students in lots of different and interactive ways like in this great example from the University of Leeds. This is clearly a trend in Higher Education, and the fact that 4 out of 6 of this year’s finalists were represented with an online course demonstrates the high visual quality of online learning nowadays.”
Carol Elston, Head of the Digital Education Service said:
“We are delighted to receive the MEDEA Award for Professionally Produced Educational Media for the online course, ‘Transport Systems: Global Issues and Future Innovations’, especially when judged among so many worthy peers. This recognition underscores the hard work of a team from the University of Leeds Digital Education Service and the Institute of Transport Studies, whose core value is to create innovative online learning that reaches millions of learners worldwide”
‘Transport Systems: Global Issues and Future Innovations’ is led by top academics from the Institute of Transport Studies and it launched on FutureLearn in January 2019.
Dr Yue Huang, lecturer at the Institute of Transport Studies and key educator of the online course says:
“The transport sector is experiencing many changes at the moment, and students at ITS come from more than 30 countries in the world. We as educators, while enjoying the influx of ideas and knowledge, are obliged to provide the best quality student education that inspires young generations, who can then embrace the opportunities to achieve safe, efficient, inclusive and sustainable transport of people and goods, in the UK and globally. The course provides an excellent platform that people can learn, not only from educators like us, but from everyone else who has a passion to shape the outlook of the transport profession.”
The course explores how the transport sector can develop infrastructures that meet the needs of a 21st century society. It outlines the current state of transport, the changing nature of society, how transport is adapting, and how new technology, such as connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) and high speed rail (HSR), can address some of the challenges faced by the transport sector.
It introduces learners to traffic engineering and modelling, and examines the role of transport professionals in designing solutions for the future. It also considers how the sector can reduce its carbon footprint, become sustainable, reduce pollution and improve the health and safety of citizens globally.
Innovative media have been chosen carefully to best communicate the learning concepts and to promote learner understanding. For example, within a case study focusing on the efficiency of road intersections, drone footage was used to capture how the traffic flowed through a junction. This footage was then overlaid with animations in order highlight the specific issues at the junction. More generally, the animated elements of the course were designed to provide a coherent bridge across all video content and interactive elements, and to compliment the real-world transport models featured.
This video illustrates how the team applied these principles to find ways to best engage the learners:
About the MEDEA AWARDS
The MEDEA Awards is an international awards scheme, that was launched in November 2007. For over ten years the MEDEA Awards, have been encouraging innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. These annual awards recognise and promote excellence in the production and pedagogical design of media-rich learning resources and bring to the forefront those producers, designers and teaching staff who provide such inspiration to the entire educational community.
For more information about the MEDEA Awards: http://www.medea-awards.com
For more information about the Media & Learning Conference: https://media-and-learning.eu/
About FutureLearn
FutureLearn is a leading online social learning platform formed in December 2012 by The Open University and is now the largest online learning platform in Europe with nine million people signed up worldwide. FutureLearn uses design, technology and partnerships to create enjoyable, credible and flexible online courses as well as undergraduate and postgraduate degrees that improve working lives. It partners with over a quarter of the world’s top universities, as well as organisations such as Accenture, the British Council, CIPD, Raspberry Pi and Health Education England (HEE). It’s also involved in government-backed initiatives to address skills gaps such as The Institute of Coding and the National Centre for Computing Education.
Useful Links:
Transport Systems: Global Issues and Future Innovations is available on FutureLearn
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/transport-systems-global-issues-and-future-innovations