Drugs: From Molecules to Man FLP project team (Team Leader: Richard Prince) (School of Biological Sciences) for Inclusive education and Flexible learning and digital delivery

Richard Prince, Paul Shore, Lisa Donlan, Ryan Metcalfe, Aimee McDonald, Evie Kenna, Laura Butlin, Hera Lam, Catherine Meade, Louie Visick

This staff-student collaborative team won for their example of a very well-planned, executed and evaluated curriculum intervention, involving staff-student partnership. The result is a demonstration of high quality inclusive and flexible teaching and learning in action.

The student contribution is also a replicable framework, combining specialist staff expertise with structured student roles to create a collaborative environment where accessibility improvements become both achievable and sustainable.

Drugs: From Molecules to Man is a Year 1 module in the School of Biological Sciences with around 600 students. In 2023 the team redesigned this unit to offer students choice over pace and place by delivering the unit in two streams, blended and fully online.  Accessibility was prioritised from the outset, to support an inclusive learning environment, with the unit broadly aligned with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA criteria. All content was provided in both text and video formats, with full text descriptions for complex diagrams and fully corrected captions on all videos. Student interns were trained to implement many of these features, enabling efficient delivery while equipping them with valuable transferable skills. Over two years, 55% of students chose the online stream, citing disabilities, employment commitments, and long commutes as motivating factors. Assessment outcomes were equivalent across both streams, indicating comparable effectiveness. Student feedback was highly positive, and in 2025 the unit achieved the highest evaluation scores among comparable Faculty modules, winning the 2025 Teaching Innovation Award from the School of Biological Sciences. 

This project demonstrates the real value of staff student collaboration in developing high quality, accessible teaching materials. On the staff side, Richard was responsible for subject specific content development, with Paul guiding the pedagogical approaches and Lisa and Ryan (FBMH eLearning) providing essential technical expertise. It was the enthusiasm, commitment and subject knowledge of the four Student Partnership Interns - Aimee, Hera, Laura and Catherine - that enabled the large-scale creation of alt text and extended descriptions and content audits, with Evie and Louie (Biological Sciences Final Year Project Students) producing focused, high impact project outputs.