Medical varsity in Ajman adopts 3D-sensurround

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

 It is going to be like in the movies for students at the Gulf Medical University (GMU) in Ajman beginning this academic year 2019-2020.

It is not like going to any ordinary movie at the usual ordinary movie-house.

Imagine not only each organ in the human body but also its inner chambers pulsating and moving au naturel as each seemingly drop down into your lap and hands.

Imagine too how even cells—from the largest to the tiniest and vice-versa—of the human body slowly crawl out revealing to yourself what they consist of.  

Eventually, you will forget to whisper or scribble in paper to your seatmates—front, back and sideways—your latest escapades.

All these with you donning that special spec—ala-MIB aka “Men In Black.”

It is called the 3D Learning Process incubated in the last several months to one year, the latest teaching innovation incorporated by the GMU administration headed by Chancellor Hossam Hamdy.

Gulf Today experienced it recently when demonstrated at the Anatomy Laboratory, the first of five classrooms equipped with other visual learning apparatuses and gadgets to become the GMU’s “movie-houses.”  

“There will be five eventually,” said Hamdy, recently invited to Seoul, South Korea to share with the educational sector there how medical education is being upgraded in the UAE, particularly at GMU, in relation to the unceasing influence of technology in the teaching profession. From the demonstration were seven Biomedical Sciences students set to graduate in the next few months namely Sameera Hayat, Lena Labouria, Hadija Begum, Dona Kamyan, Ikram Warfa, and Sabah Alrajjar.

They were mesmerised. It seemed no one blinked an eye. They stayed focused on the wide screen. They did not chat with one another.

They commented the approach is so out-of-the-box and provides an interesting means to spark all the text and words in medical and allied sciences books and literature even these are splashed with colourful images to help students stir up their imagination.

“Books tend to become boring. But with this (3D Learning), we get to understand more now what we read. It helps us to remain focused. The (sensurround) helps us to concentrate.”

All were one in saying how lucky the next set of enrollees at the university will be to be able to learn the theories and the practical side of their chosen future professions.

With Hamdy in the development of the novel teaching strategy are all the faculty members and staff of the university who spent time together coming up with all that has to be 3D-ied, based on their respective experiences as medical and allied profession practitioners and academicians, according to GMU e-Leaning manager & IT lecturer Suraj Sebastian.

Name all the basic subjects or foundations each and every Medical and Allied Sciences students must totally grasp and fully comprehend before they become the full-fledged medical and health professional they wish to be—Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Pathology, Embryology, Neuro-Anatomy—all these have been encapsulated and it does not stop there since the medical field continually progresses.   

Biomedical Sciences-Anatomy lecturer Dr Liju Susan Mathew and Biomedical Sciences-Anatomy lecturer/Anatomy Laboratory in-charge Suni Ebby said the innovation is a huge step towards helping them as professors engage well with their students.

They welcomed it in addition to the normal teaching approaches the university still employs.

Both said that while “the powerpoints, microscopes, and cadavers” will remain as instruments in the learning process of the students, both also said the 3D-sensurround experience will trigger more inquisitiveness and the interest of the students, leading to more discussions and therefore wider comprehension for much better and prepared medical and healthcare professionals of the future.

Chancellor Hamdy said the latest innovation is part and parcel of the strategies the university is employing to revolutionise education in relation to artificial intelligence, “The 3D classroom is a technology-enhanced environment. Seeing in 3D the mechanisms and movement at the molecular and cellular level (all of the organs of the human body) creates a very genuine image close to reality which is much better for the retention of the lessons learnt.”