 Expanding your professional skills brings many benefits, but studying whilst working can often be a juggle. Digital software company Barco partners with academic institutions to deliver accessible teaching and training. We went to Birmingham to find out how it works. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are joining us for today's session on anti-money laundering essentials. This is the latest technology, helping to bring people together to learn from all over the world. James is the course director. The screen wraps around him for a more intimate feel. The students are life-size. If they say something, their words come from a loud speaker near their screen and the trainer naturally turns to speak to them. Rachel, Chris, David, Glenn, Thomas and Catalina, what are your thoughts around some of Mark's observations? They're quite similar to what we had. The new technology is called Barco We Connect. It's a virtual classroom delivering remote learning in the world of training and education. Here is being used by the International Compliance Association. The ICA provides qualifications to regulatory and financial crime compliance professionals in 157 countries. The trainers love it. They, for them it's transformational. They feel that they are taking part in a proper training event that is, as I say, operating in three dimensions. I think we underestimate the value of those nuances. Being able to read the room, to understand the level of energy and interest from the students, by being able to see them very, very clearly, life-size on these screens. There are breakout rooms for trainees to collaborate and get to know each other. The blue flashing light indicates who's chatting, so the trainer can jump in and help if the group is struggling. Polls can be set, the white board shared, and there are stats that reveal who is contributing, so the trainer can spot those who may need help. Barco's We Connect virtual classroom is a subscription-based software designed for teaching, training and learning needs across the entire campus or company, whether on site or online. I think it's key that you still have that engagement with your peers, not just with the teacher itself, but you know that you're in a classroom, an active engaging classroom. When someone asks a question, you want to hear that, you want to see who asked that question, you want to potentially like their question, which then could bump that question up to the top of the teacher's list. The virtual classroom encourages people to share ideas. It's really fascinating that in that process that we've sort of come out of that and hit on the word determination. Yeah, so that's really an instinct mirror. I think what came out of our group was talking about the helplessness that society often feels. The new technology has been set up in the Birmingham office of Wilmington CELC, a global company with a portfolio of information, education and digital businesses serving the risk and compliance, health care and professional sectors, including ICA. This office opened just before the pandemic. Technology has helped to keep people connected, but for it to carry on working in the future, technology needs to bring people together emotionally. We identified Barco as a supplier. The technology allowed people to interact with the lecturer or the teacher in a way that was comparable to when they were in the physical environment. We were already thinking about how we can deliver online education and that is core to our business. We've been investing in what I would describe as educational technologies for many years now. And this is really just the latest in the investments that we've made. Great technology in the hands of a great teacher has the power to transform the way we learn. It is the future and there is common use of platforms and they're useful, but they're not primarily teaching environments. What this is offering is, as I said before, a three dimensional experience, an opportunity for the students to become more emotionally as well as physically engaged in what they're learning. Barco creates visual experiences in many sectors from medical and cinema to theme parks. This expertise allowed it to respond quickly to the rapid digitisation of work and education, which is expected to lead to a future of blended online and in-person training. Students can be anywhere in the world, can be global. We create dedicated studios, but even the lecturer doesn't have to travel to the studio either, so there can be remote hosts and as well as remote students. Nothing beats a good face-to-face chat, but with technology like Reconnect, you get as close as you can to capturing those fun little things that make us human.