The Learning Innovation Summit, held on 21 July at Collins Square in Melbourne, began with series of standing room only presentations. Professor Beverley Oliver from Deakin University highlighted how Universities needed to change their recognition of student skills. She called for the need to go beyond the traditional measurement of learning gains in response to workplace demand for translatable skills. We also heard of the teaching styles being envisioned by Professor Ariel Anbar and his team at Arizona State University as they explore novel ways of teaching through exploration. They see students collaborating online to solve complex problems around futuristic scenarios, such as setting up a colony on Mars. If you weren’t able to attend, these presentations are well worth a watch when the videos become available over the next few weeks. In the meantime, the highlights video gives a great overview of the energy of the day.

One of the exciting things about the Learning Innovation Summit was the breadth of disciplines represented, from biomedicine to space, to banking and childcare. This provided attendees with the opportunity to gain inspiration from across the education sector. The BEST Network is unique in its collaborative approach to the sharing of images, tools and resources between institutions. Professor Nicholas Hawkins, Director of the BEST Network, had the opportunity to present our communities work as part of the Lightning Talks morning session. This presentation focused on the journey taken throughout his career in the creation of digital resources in the field pathology, culminating in the work being completed today.

The lunchtime session saw a demonstration of Slice as well the release of our new radiology image viewer. This was received with great interest with a number of people keen to try out Slice within their own institutions.

Our afternoon workshop gave some of the attendees working in biomedical/biological fields the opportunity to hear about the variety of ways BEST members are using the Network’s tools and resources. These included presentations by:

• Dr Angela Finch who uses tutorials to prepare students for lab work (review an example of her work on the BEST Portal);
• Joanne Russell who uses Slice and Smart Sparrow to create engaging histopathology classes. Joanne also presented her work on improving student and demonstrator grading of scientific reports as part of the lunchtime session. She has generously made this work available to the BEST Community;
• Dr Stephanie Dowdell who presented on using the Smart Sparrow platform for exams; and
• Associate Professor Kristine Elliott who demonstrated her work on Communication and Health Information Technologies in Clinical Practice which uses a number of engaging elements from the platform including using a student’s input from another screen and invisible "hotspots".

The BEST Network afternoon workshop at the Learning Innovation Summit.