STUDENT sessions are proving to be true to life as they use the latest technology to boost their learning – including AI mannequins who aren’t always model patients.
T-level health and social care students at Darlington College are making the most of brand new facilities which create a hospital ward, nursing home and GP surgery occupied by hi-tech mannequins which interact, sometimes rudely.
The college invested in the advanced dummies which range from an elderly person and tattooed teenager to a clinically obese patient and a baby.
Student Scarlet Wilson, 16, of Darlington, who hopes to be a midwife or physiotherapist one day, said: “The AI mannequins are incredible, the way they interact with us is amazing, though they can be a bit rude. The course is really practical which helps you understand what you want to do. You are in an accurate setting and actually feel what it’s like.”
Claire Heseltine, 17, of Middleton-St-George, who hopes to become a paramedic or a nurse, added: “It is so much more than a normal college course because it is so practical and I have learned so much, it’s amazing.
“The placements are valuable too as it is just as important to find out what you don’t want to do as it is find out what you like. On the course we learn the theory and are then able to put it into practice.”
T-level programme leader for health and social care Sarah Lloyd said: “These new facilities, complete with the AI mannequins, make teaching so much easier. In the past I have been telling students ‘this is what it will be like’. Now they can experience it for themselves. They are a great group and doing very well.”
The new equipment allows students to communicate with ‘patients’ and hone their person-centred care protocols. They can also experience feeding patients, making beds with someone in them, taking vital signs such as blood pressure, handling the mannequins using hoists and wheelchairs, as well as taking ‘blood’ and witnessing patient self-harm scars.
With a reputation for being at the vanguard of new technology Darlington College also became one of the first in the region to develop a 360 degree immersive classroom to complement its virtual reality suite. It is leading from the front in building its own interfaces from the ground up, as some of the off-the-shelf solutions available often don’t meet the needs of the teaching staff.
The immersive room is fitted with hi-tech projectors that can screen connected images onto all four walls and the carpet.
Installed by Middlesbrough company Animmersion UK, lecturers have reported the ‘endless learning capabilities of the system’, which is moving students away from traditional desks, pens and paper and immersing them in a learning experience right across the curriculum.
Gaming students, for instance, are able to sit inside the game they have just designed to experience and test the work they have produced. Engineers are able to problem solve at the top of a wind turbine or on the seabed, areas that would otherwise be inaccessible for practical, health and safety reasons.
For more information on opportunities at Darlington College visit www.darlington.ac.uk.
