RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences has celebrated two award wins at the 2024 Times Higher Education Awards. Dr Jenny Moffett has been awarded Most Innovative Teacher of the Year and the SURGhub project, led by Eric O’Flynn and Dr Ines Peric, was named Technological Innovation of the Year.

Dr Moffett, based in RCSI’s Health Professions Education Centre, was recognised for her work to co-develop a digital educational escape room with RCSI students to address a critical lack of uncertainty management training in medical education.

Dr Moffett engaged medical students in a design-thinking process that facilitated deep understanding of clinical students’ experiences. Together, they created an online ‘maker space’ that established a safe, inclusive environment for both staff and students. The team developed the The Hidden Hospital, a spooky, immersive puzzle game that supports learning around complexity, ambiguity and unpredictability, transcending learners’ demographic, socio-cultural, and neurodiverse differences.

The judges commented on Dr Moffett’s award saying: “Dr Moffett’s Hidden Hospital addresses a critical gap in medical education with a collaborative, inclusive design process that empowers students as co-creators, and prepares them for real-world challenges. Her commitment to open access further demonstrates her dedication to advancing education beyond her institution.”

Led by Eric O’Flynn and Dr Ines Peric from the RCSI Insitute of Global Surgery, SURGhub is a collaborative project between RCSI’s Institute of Global Surgery, the Global Surgery Foundation and the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR), aimed at giving trainee surgeons in low-resource countries access to training materials.

There are currently over 7,000 learners from 170 countries engaging with 60 courses on the platform. 71% of learners are from countries classified as low or middle income by the World Bank and the materials are also being used in highly challenging contexts, including in every conflict zone in the world such as Ukraine, Palestine, Yemen and Sudan. Courses are made as accessible as possible, with downloadable materials for offline access, transcripts and subtitles for all video and audio, and a mobile app.

The THE Awards judges recognised the impact of the SURGhub project, saying: “Addressing a worldwide need to access to affordable surgical care, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences developed SURGhub. We were impressed by the ambition and the scope of the project, which provides high quality training via an innovative online open-access platform, and aims to support more than 100,000 learners in the next two years.”

Professor Tracy Robson, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, RCSI said: “On behalf of the RCSI community, I extend my sincere congratulations to Dr Jenny Moffett, Eric O’Flynn and Ines Peric for their incredible success in the Times Higher Education Awards.

“These awards reflect RCSI’s commitment to educate, nurture and discover for the benefit of human health, which is the foundation of everything we do. Dr Moffett’s groundbreaking approach aligns with RCSI’s goal to empower our students to excel in complex clinical and scientific environments worldwide. Meanwhile, the SURGhub project highlights our dedication to enhancing global health and wellbeing, building on 25 years of work to strengthen surgical capacity in underserved communities.”

Celebrating excellence

Widely known as the ‘Oscars of higher education’, the annual THE Awards celebrate excellence across a wide range of university activity including leadership and management, administration, and academia. This year’s awards attracted more than 700 entries – a new record – with 70 institutions making the final shortlists.

John Gill, THE’s editor, said this year’s winners were “walking in the footprints of an incredible cohort of awards nominees stretching back 20 years”, adding that they demonstrated that “even though times are tough, the creativity and energy in UK and Irish universities remain undiminished”.