Thomas Söderqvist 
We are right now teaching a course in medical science and technology studies here at Medical Museion and we are using medical historical museum objects. It’s the first time we do so, and we’ve talked about that it would be great to expand this — and to learn more about how others have used artefacts in similar teaching situations.
The opportunity to learn more came sooner than I thought. Helen Chatterjee and her colleagues at UCL Museums & Collections are organising a day of talks on 2 April to discuss how museum objects can be used to engage students more deeply with their subjects. The aim to promote the use of museum objects as a pedagogy that can be used in a huge range of disciplines and improve the student experience, and will cover:
- using objects to address threshold concepts
- troublesome knowledge and problem-based learning
- using object-based learning in teaching transferable skills and course content by focusing discussions around collections
- brief case-studies from teaching staff already using museum collections in imaginative ways
- how newcomers to object-based learning can go about incorporating these tools into their own curricula.
Further information at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/obl/. To reserve a free place, write to Lauren Sadler (l.sadler@ucl.ac.uk ) before 23 March.
