This edtech begs the question, is there any other way?
INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero
Highly commended by the Dental Industry in 2022, winner of The EdTech Trendsetter Award as part of The EdTech Awards from EdTech Digest in 2023, this unique team is poised for expansion in 2024 and beyond.
Chloe Barrett (pictured) is founder and CEO of Immersify Education, an edtech company providing an advanced way of learning using interactive augmented reality and animation targeting all learning domains. Offering a multi-language system and intelligent learning app tracking behavior and progress, they are experiencing great success starting in Dentistry. Chloe had previous worked scaling a Dental Education company where she initially discovered problems common to much of theory-into-practical learning. Her veteran team specializes in advanced technologies, with plans to expand into other academic areas as well. They are well-versed in producing diverse and innovative resources, using interactive augmented reality and animation to enhance learning, and collaborating with external bodies while keeping a positive and developmental relationship with key investors.
Chloe would describe herself as ambitious, determined, compassionate and resilient, always embracing new challenges. In her spare time she enjoys riding her horse and organizing charity events.
In this EdTech Digest interview, she maneuvers through a series of inquiries in great form, which is also how she has been leading her company forward.
Briefly describe your company’s background—how does what you’re doing support higher education?
Immersify was founded in 2019 as an advanced training application providing immersive learning for higher education, our first academic was dentistry because of my background in dentistry and where the seed was planted for Immersify. Since then, Immersify has built out a robust catalogue of educational resources for dentistry, aligning with curriculum outputs, and in 2023, launched Immersify for nursing. The roadmap has 32 other practical academic areas which Immersify is expanding into.
The goal of Immersify is to go beyond the textbook, bridging the gap between theory and practice. With interactive 3D content, augmented reality-based simulations, assessment-based activities, and other active learning experiences, students can grow their confidence when carrying out the clinical aspects of their education, and have a ‘go-to’ comprehensive, quality assured content platform, that students and educators can use in a variety of ways which is data driven. Immersify supports students to in and outside of practical environments, supporting academic grades and much more, but ultimately and more importantly, to be much better prepared to enter their chosen profession.
‘The goal … is to go beyond the textbook, bridging the gap between theory and practice. With interactive 3D content, augmented reality-based simulations, assessment-based activities, and other active learning experiences, students can grow their confidence…’
And of course, better prepared and more confident students lead to higher admissions, academic progression, and graduation rates.
Could you share any evidence of research data to show the results Immersify is receiving in education? Can you share some success stories or examples of how you’ve already made a positive impact on learners, educators, or institutions?
There is a variety of evidence-based data showcasing the success of Immersify in education. A large student research study showed the selection of the following:
- Students score Immersify’s content usefulness at 99%.
- 97% agree that the platform has high quality visual resources.
- 96% of students say that Immersify makes studying more enjoyable.
- 93% of students find it useful to prepare for exams.
A recent research project carried out by UCLA ‘Impacts of Immersify on student clinical performance, the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between Immersify group and non-Immersify group where the Immersify group achieved 50% higher in their outputs.
What specific challenges or gaps in the current education system do you aim to address through your approach? Why should educational institutions adopt your solution?
There are worldwide shortages of health care professionals as their roles are becoming more advanced and requiring a more complete skillset. With Immersify focused currently on dentistry and nursing, we are well-positioned to improve the increasing clinical skills of these practitioners to help them take on the complex responsibilities demanded of them.
Educational institutions invest heavily in expensive equipment and laboratories in order to provide access to practice clinical skills, but the students can’t take all of this home with them. Just getting in the bare minimum required clinical hours is a challenge for the student and the university alike.
Immersify delivers a solution that allows for simulated practice that is available 24/7 from a student’s smart phone, iPad and laptop. Being able to fail safely in simulations like ABCDE assessment in nursing or injecting local anesthesia in dentistry, for example, lets students have hours of repeated practice so they can make the most of their clinical sessions and receive on the go data so they have a grasp of their progress before they even take an exam. Immersify will always be there for them as they advance in their education and then even when they go on to start their professional practice.
Explain the unique selling points and key features of your approach—what innovative methods or technologies does your company employ?
Immersify includes interactive lessons, quizzes, and simulations built with this generation of student in mind, all of the content is written and created by experts, and this is accompanied by 3D models which are designed with the exact dimensions, for example a 3D of the human anatomy, students can zoom, rotate, and interact with everything from muscles and tissue to jaw bones and teeth and on down to nerves and cells. No matter the health care profession the student is studying, this active approach to learning brings the material to life, which increases understanding and retention.
As students navigate their lessons and visual multiple-choice questions with this type of technology, they can then launch simulations that allow them to put theory into practice. A simulation like Dental ID becomes much more impactful, for example, when the students have had the opportunity to select, rotate, and interact with the tooth from every angle.
With Immersify, the days of staring at static images, highlighting text, and re-writing notes in order to memorize the material are things of the past. Instead, through augmented reality, students can carry out simulations in a hands-on and visual way. Dental charting, where you examine a patient’s teeth looking for things like cavities is a core part of clinical study in dental school. With Immersify’s technology, the student’s phone becomes the mirror they can rotate around a 3D model patient’s mouth to then chart out the patient’s treatment needs. In nursing, you can practice venepuncture and get feedback on the placement of the tourniquet and angle of insertion.
Immersify’s goal is to get more students in their clinical hours or sitting their exams and confidently saying, “I’ve done this before with Immersify”.
Anything else you would like to share about what’s next for your company?
The launch of Immersify 4.0 is happening in August 2024, this will include thousands of hours of content, a new content studio, which allows educational institutions to have a personalized space to adapt Immersify to align with any curriculum changes and our publishing and content team can add and make changes in minutes. There is also an advancement to our analytics portal which supports the students and educators in understanding areas of progress and improvement through everything they interactive with on the platform.
How do you envision the future of education?
Our mission is to reach millions of students and to make a positive impact in a variety of different academic areas. As a technology enabled company we are always developing for now and for the future. The current skills gap needs bridging, and this will only continue as new types of job roles become available, these subject areas will also need quality resources, which are personalized, and data driven so outputs can be considered as early on in their educational journey as possible, and Immersify will provide this.
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Victor Rivero is Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com
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