Summary

DRAFT “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” Authors: Margaret O'Connell and Penny Neuendorf CIT, through the Centre for Health, Community and Wellbeing and the Centre for Education Excellence, is undertaking a project titled ‘Virtual Worlds for Health Education’, funded by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The COAG strategy was set up to address the supply of skilled labour to industries and regions of strategic importance to the Australian economy. The Targeting Skills Needs in Regions (TSNR) Programme gives effect to this COAG initiative. The key objective of the TSNR Programme is to identify and support the implementation of practical, flexible, innovative and integrated strategies that improve the supply of skilled labour to industries in regions of strategic economic importance in the national economy. CIT approached this virtual world project from an educational rather than a technological approach, the question wasn’t what the technology can do but rather what do we want to do and how can the technology help us achieve this. Research has show that most virtual world projects have had initial success but have not been sustainable. CIT has used a modified ADDIE (reference) approach, putting TASK upfront. By using this framework we were able to develop realistic workplace scenarios with strong educational and task focuses. This virtual world and the tasks in it are used as part of blended learning. 1st person tasks were designed to give the students perspective and understanding of what it is like to “walk in someone else’s shoes”. These single person scenario give the participants a chance to experience “virtual” what it is like to have a range of conditions ranging from Tunnel Vision to drug induced states. These 1st person scenarios are also designed to give the participants an introduction to the virtual world environment in a non threatening scenario that they can take their time to complete. This is an immersive experience but are we coercive the participants into it, if participants really don’t want to participate are we providing other options to get the knowledge and experience that they receive in the virtual environment. Is it cheaper to use the virtual world or should be also be providing special glass for the student to wear in a simulated environment (physical) to give them the idea of tunnel vision and let them get the bumps and bruises when they run into furniture. The idea for these type of experiences came from [|Second Life® Virtual Hallucination] experience. Synchronises interactions are both powerful and immersive. These scenarios have been designed to be “live” interactions where participants can mix with other professionals and numerous levels. Levels include basic communications, working with experts or professionals in the field drawing on legitiment peripheral participation, work place orientation in practices and policies and increasing digit literacy and employability skills. This was a concept we thought of at the beginning of the project, the idea behind it was to have a “watcher” a avatar that was able to observe interactions without taking part in the scenario role plays or impacting on them in any way. Our plan was to have glass or transparent walls that would allow participants to observe other live or staged interactions, learning would then occur with the participant as they discuss their observations. Once the interactions have been performed they can be recorded and show either virtually or shown in the class room or stored as a resource or used as a resource in an online environment. This happens after every virtual interaction, even in the a-synchronises interactions where they might for example have to post a message on a discussion about their experience. The debriefing sessions are based around The debriefing sessions are where all the learning is extracted from the fun or immersion and put back into a learning context. It is important for the facilitator or the other participants to be able to pull out the different aspects of learning that occurred e.g. what communication skills did they use when calming the angry client. Self reflection and openness to constructive feedback in a safe environment is very important for the debriefing process to be successful. Debriefing can happen in a physical place or in the virtual world environment.
 * // Participation in Virtual World Environments: Immersive or Coercive?  //**
 * Background **
 * First Person Experiences **
 * Second Person Experiences **
 * Third person perspective **
 * Debriefing **