About Birley Place
Birley Place is an award-winning virtual community and online simulation platform created by the Faculty of Health and Education at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Birley Place can be used for a huge range of teaching and learning purposes. Create immersive learning activities that connect your learners to people, community, and their future professions.
Authentic people in place and context
“Birley Place” started life in the Department of Nursing where educators wanted to promote a more person-centred approach to care.
Since its beginnings, Birley Place has grown and developed into an interdisciplinary tool, placing people at the heart of our students’ learning.
We created simulated neighbourhoods using publicly-available data about our local area so that the people who feature in our case studies can live within a rich, realistic context.
Educators can combine people, places, services, and this neighbourhood data to create authentic, immersive learning.
By giving simulated people lives, family, jobs, hobbies, and socio-economic context, we broaden our view to the person in front of us, not just the disease.
Image Map Pro – map and hotspots for Schofields.
Uses
- Blended simulations where students meet a person through in-class simulations that extend into the virtual community with either pre- or post class learning.
- Online learning where students engage with a simulation online, and complete activities independently or collaboratively in live online
- Simple simulations such as a case study based around one individual and their circumstances.
- Complex simulations that combine multiple people or family units, interacting with a range of services, within different places, and/or over time.
- Case studies over time featuring the same individuals over multiple stages of their care or education.
- Place-based case studies that focus on a place or service within the community.
- Virtual placements that combine simulated people and places with other instructional material to create extended learning experiences for students.
- Research outputs presented as short courses that directly link to case studies and activities.
Based on real-world data from communities around Manchester
Video created with Google Earth
Digital Humans
Case studies are stories. We are using the latest creative digital tools to bring these stories to life. These realistic, emotive animated avatars put a face to the people at the heart of your teaching.
Link on the images to view short animations.
Values
Birley Place aims to embody these values:
Person-centred approach
People have full lives, and can’t be reduced to one aspect of their situation. We seek to sensitively describe people’s lives.
Local knowledge
Place-based learning specific to Greater Manchester
Diversity in the curriculum
Diversity holds so many benefits to our students’ learning and experience.
Versatile and flexible
Birley Place is designed to enable a variety of teaching and learning approaches. This sets it apart from many Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) which are often linear and prescriptive.
Collaboration
Collaboratively created content is available to all users allowing for interdisciplinary and interprofessional learning.
Community engagement
We seek to engage with ‘experts by experience’ to inform the materials we create in Birley Place.
Our collaborators
