Immersive Room (IR) space – All you Need to Know About the College IT Experience

What’s Bournemouth and Poole College’s best-kept secret? Well, it’s probably the Immersive Room, located at the front of the library learning environment space on the first floor above reception in Poole. It’s akin to something like an outtake from Tom Cruise’s film, ‘Minority Report’, and the immersive room is an experiential guide to all things IT.

The room has three walls and a floor covering which are all interactive. Made – surprisingly – only of construction plasterboard; the walls can be pushed to depress the interactive element from the four OHPs (overhead projectors) that span the room. The IR also can use smell technology with an atomiser containing smell liquids, or can blow wind through fans. The experience for students and teachers alike, is one of not only ‘surround-sound’; but also ‘surround-senses’. 

The Digital Education Team responsible for the Immersive Suite a 4 by 4 metre space is developing bespoke training materials for specific courses. An example is an interactive plumbing ‘Escape Room’ style game where trainee plumbers learn how to wire up an S-bend from an electronics perspective. The challenging game/learning environment is equipped for students to move around the room, depressing buttons with their hands to move to the next ‘level’ or stage of the learning process. 

Other programs that have been developed include a space with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which replicate certain rooms such as the Sunseeker training suite or the Early Years areas – where filming can be done on the in-house 360 camera of the areas wishing to be represented. 

As well as creating Bespoke programmes for learners, the interactive space can be used for displays such as one on Pride Week, one for Black History Month (upcoming for October 2024) and a previous exhibition on literary greats such as Oscar Wilde and his life. There is one planned for Mary Shelley, author of the famous ‘Frankenstein’ novels. 

Students can also come in for a more holistic experience such as to brush-stroke walls to do therapeutic colouring, have an all-encapsulating  meditation room with waves, sounds and colours, or students and staff can use the range of Immersive Suite Catalogue Library ‘items’ which can give an experience of being in a riot, being underwater, inside the human body and much, much more. Currently the Digital Education Team are looking into ways to make the Immersive Studio software library much more widely available. There are opportunities for money ‘scenarios’, learning ‘timekeeping’ and ‘times’ and shopping experiences. Really, with this one the sky isn’t the limit!

At the moment, projects are assessed on a case-by-case basis as to how long they may take to create, and bookings are subject to availability as a member of IT staff needs to be present to run the room and help out at any given time. For teachers to book their timeslots in the suite, they can use the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/RFb1LeKWJX or it can be accessed via CID on TeamHub from the DELE Area. There are also 10 VR headsets available for booking in the VR Hub alongside the suite. 

Jason Eastwood, Head of Digital Education & Learning Environments said: “Whilst we currently have only launched the Poole Immersive Room, we would love to be able to offer the same experience for the staff and students at the Bournemouth campus. We are seeing great success with the venture so far, and students and staff are loving coming into the IR. It is a multi-functional aide to learning and can be adapted to utilise all other products such as Microsoft. We envisage staff outside of the college amongst our partner organisations also coming to use our space in the future, for their learning and teams’ awareness days”. 

He added: "The best thing about the immersive classroom is that it transforms learning from passive to active, the students don't just absorb information—they experience it, making education both meaningful and memorable."