New learning environment saves time
Thanks to a new learning environment, developed and installed by UK-based Clever Technology, students at the Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM) in London are spending less time travelling to and from lectures. Instead, they spend much more time on hospital wards gaining clinical experience with doctors and patients. The first of its kind in Europe, the new system links 10 remote sites around London to the ICSM's state-of-the-art Sir Alexander Fleming Building in South Kensington. Students at the remote teaching hospitals see and hear everything the lecturer presents on video screens, and the sophisticated audio and video technology enables full participation in the lectures from any location. "This new approach to undergraduate tuition will enhance the training our students receive and help them realise their full potential more easily," commented Professor Michael Whitehouse, Vice Principal for Undergraduate Medicine in the School of Medicine. "Working closely with Clever Technology, we have created a twenty-first century teaching environment where technology reduces the need to travel and provides the students with the opportunity of more clinical experience at an earlier stage in their six-year course." ICSM is the result of the merger of four London medical schools and has 1800 undergraduate medical students located at 10 sites in and around central London. The new electronic teaching network provides the backbone of ICSM's teaching infrastructure and ensures that all students have access to a uniformly high standard of tuition from some of Europe's leading medical specialists and clinicians. As well as the advanced lecture delivery network, the widely distributed student and staff population have electronic bulletin board and e-mail facilities to support inter-student, inter-staff and staff-student communication. Access by students and staff to high-quality video tape recordings of lectures and images facilitates access to a wider range of materials. Superb sound and picture quality is vital to the new learning system. Clever Technology has taken equipment developed for professional broadcasters and integrated it in a way that is focussed on the needs of the student and lecturer. "Students and staff take this new approach on-board very quickly," said Imperial College project manager Mike Barrett. "Its image quality and interactivity are such that you become immersed in the lecture even though you are many miles from the lecture hall." ICSM regards its current activity as the first stage of a much more widespread project. The School is looking at the potential for staging medical conferences encompassing multiple sites using the electronic network. It can also foresee a time in the future when lectures and conferences can be delivered to Internet users. "The versatility of this technology is immense," commented Mike Barrett. "Although our initial plan is radical in itself, there is a long way to go before we have exhausted the potential of our electronic network to teach, inform and communicate with a very large audience.
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