Natasha Barrett

Responsibilities:

Teaching Fellow

Areas of interest

Natasha has taught Human Anatomy and Physiology for over ten years to undergraduates across Life Sciences
She is responsible for co-ordinating and delivering teaching programmes within the School of Biological Sciences
She advocates the use of technology where it enhances the learning experience and has road-tested several novel approaches for her department, testing both the learning benefits and ease of use for academics and students

Part 1: Pathology and Histology, Human Physiology
Part 2: Clinical Biomedicine, Endocrinology
Part 3: Group leader for both Systematic Literature Review and Teaching, Outreach and Science Communication final year projects

Member of Impact, Enterprise and Outreach

Lead educator for the online Heart Health course, taken by over 55,000 participants, completing about 1,000,000 learning activities and posting 90,000 comments
STEM Ambassador
6th form college presentations to prospective students

Natasha's research background is in platelet biology, haematology
Natasha is actively engaged in teaching and learning research
Collaborator on the Leverhulme Trust funded project on 3D learning in a collaborative environment using haptics. The cross-institution team (University of Reading and Kings College London) aims to enhance understanding of cell biology using cutting-edge haptics technology (touch/VR)
Investigating novel ways to improve student engagement with marking criteria and feedback (in large classes)
Investigating whether attendance or other measures better reflect engagement in our students
Use of electronic card readers to monitor student attendance / engagement

Esteem Factors

University Teaching Fellow Award (a prestigious award for individuals who have demonstrated individual excellence, and made a significant contribution to the development of teaching and learning at the University)
Fellow of the HEA

Tokatli, O. , Tracey, M. , Hwang, F. , Barrett, N. , Jones, C. , Johnson, R. , Webb, M. , Harwin, W. (2018) A classroom deployment of a haptic system for learning cell biology. (Published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volumes 10893 and 10894)

Webb, M. , Tracey, M. , Harwin, W. , Tokatli, O. , Hwang, F. , Johnson, R. , Barrett, N. , Jones, C. (2017) The potential for haptic-enabled interaction to support collaborative learning in school biology. In: Resta, P. and Smith, S. , (eds.) Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2017. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) , Chesapeake VA. pp. 927-935. ISBN: 9781939797278

Stanley, R. , Tucker, K. , Barrett, N. , Gibbins, J. (2011) Platelets and their role in thrombotic and cardiovascular disease: the impact of proteomic analysis. In: Garcia, A. and Senis, Y. , (eds.) Platelet Proteomics: Principles, Analysis and Applications. Mass Spectrometry Wiley pp. 3-26. ISBN: 9780470463376
Jones, C. , Barrett, N. , Moraes, L. , Gibbins, J. , Jackson, D. (2011) Endogenous inhibitory mechanisms and the regulation platelet function. In: Gibbins, J. and Mahaut-Smith, M. , (eds.) Platelets and Megakaryocytes. vol. 3, Additional Protocols and Perspectives. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 788 Humana Press pp. 341-366. ISBN: 9781617793066

Falati, . , Patil, . , Gross, . , Stapleton, . , Merrill-Skoloff, . , Barrett, . , Pixton, . , Weiler, . , Cooley, . , Newman, . , Newman, . , Furie, . , Furie, . , Gibbins, . (2006) Platelet PECAM-1 inhibits thrombus formation in vivo. Blood , 107 (2). pp. 535-541. ISSN: 0006-4971 | doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood-2005-04-1512