George Bradford's List: Nursing - Second Life Project

• Tacoma Community College John Miller, an instructor at Tacoma Community College,  Washington, has been using SL since 2007 to teach his students. His immersive  virtual world uses avatar robots as simulated patients and an interface that  interacts with hospital equipment, medicine, vitals, patient charts, and much  more while recording student or team decision-making. It has a presentation  version for group viewing and a teaching version for synchronous  instruction.
  
  
• The Immersive Learning System (ILS), built by MOVErs, LLC (of which Miller is a  co-founder), can be customized for any medical scenario.
• http://slurl.com/secondlife/Evergreen% 20Island/104/97/26
• www. youtube.com/jsmillerRN
• muversllc@gmail.com
• University of Kansas School of Nursing Faculty members Judith Warren and Juliana  Brixey use SL to teach graduate nursing students about informatics. SL is also  used to provide these online students with opportunities to interact with each  other and faculty in real-time meetings. In-class SL experiences allow students  and faculty to meet, much the same as in a real-world classroom.
• Teams interact with faculty, who role-play as the LTC administrator and staff  nurse, in real time.
• jbrixey@kumc.edu
• University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Nursing The UWOCON goal is to create  a virtual learning center that facilitates distance education endeavors for the  College of Nursing's collaborative online bachelor's degree programs: BSN@HOME  (specifically, the community health nursing course in this program) and ACCEL  (accelerated online BSN degree).
• Current SL sites are the Pollok Alumni House, classrooms, faculty offices, a  library, a student welcome center, a public health office, and a disaster  scenario. At least 20 nurse faculty and academic staff and 77 accelerated  nursing students (three cohorts) have avatars and hold class sessions and  faculty/student office hours; engage in synchronous chats; and utilize the  public health (PH) department for class exercises. Current exercises in the PH  department include a module in which students learn the role of the sanitarian.
• Several factors facilitated the work of these pioneers. First and foremost, they  were willing to experiment and examine multiple methods to facilitate student  learning. Second, each group had support from various resources to assist in  their development. Miller, for example, ventured into the virtual world and  networked with various support groups, like Virtual Ability  (http://virtualability.org/default.aspx), took a graduate class on Teaching and  Learning in Virtual Worlds from Boise State University, and had some students  who already knew about SL.
• Several hurdles were identified by these pioneers and their students. First was  gaining the necessary skills to interact and build systems in SL. Each of the  pioneers described the challenges involved: learning how to build systems,  finding scripts, purchasing objects, and expanding their skills as scenarios  became more complex. Then there was the challenge of obtaining necessary  hardware. Neither faculty nor students had the necessary higher-end computers  with graphic capabilities. It was also difficult to use computers in classrooms.  Besides the hardware requirements and difficulties with bandwidth, schools  blocked programs using voice applications. All agreed that technical support was  needed for both faculty and students. Third, many students had a significant  learning curve, particularly those who were not net generation students who grew  up with video games and virtual worlds.
  
  
• My last question to the pioneers focused on student impact and their responses  to SL experiences. An evaluation of SL by the UWOCON group will be published in  the May/June issue of Nurse Educator. They reported, "Even though our students  are online, not all embrace technology. Some students do not see the value of  immersive education.
• "For students, gaining skill in human computer interaction extends beyond using  a mouse and keyboard: learning how to create their avatar, dress the avatar,  including finding clothes and hair (good hair is very important!), learning how  to teleport to various locations in SL as well as using the search function.  Some students report concern about interacting with other avatars. They describe  feelings of discomfort, concern, and fear, much like the real world, and fail to  realize they can escape to another location by teleporting when approached by  another avatar. One student has reported some motion sickness when flying. This  is a known side effect of working in VR."
  
  
• Diane.Skiba@ucdenver.edu

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