Haptics, which means the sense of touch, has been a growing aspect of technology in education and training and across society at large. Haptic devices are not only found in the smart phone in your pocket but are widely used in science, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science.

This includes the use of hapTEL, a simulator developed at King’s College London in collaboration with Universities of Reading and Birmingham City through a large ESRC/EPSRC research project (2007-11). This simulator enables undergraduate dental students to learn how to drill teeth, medical, dental veterinary and nursing students give injections and is revolutionizing the way students and professionals can enhance their learning and practice.

The seminar will present the 10 years of research, development and evaluation by the hapTEL team and will include a wide range of examples of haptic technologies now being developed across the world for use in education and health care and explain the ways in which these technologies might change all our lives for the better in the years to come.

About the speaker

Professor Margaret Cox is Emerita Professor of Information Technology in Education in both the School of Education, Communication and Society and The Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences at King's College London and a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

For more than 40 years, starting at the University of Surrey, she has developed educational technologies, researched the impact of IT on teaching, learning and assessment in all education sectors. In the last 12 years, she has pioneered the development and evaluation of haptic technologies in dentistry, medicine and other healthcare professions in higher education for which her hapTEL project has been awarded four separate prizes for outstanding contributions to new technologies in education.

She is the immediate past-President of the National Conference of University Professors, past President of the Association for IT Teachers in Schools (ACITT which merged with NAACE in 2002) and founder member of the international Edusummits which advise governments world-wide on IT in Education.