Second Life Simulations
Teaching Nurse Anesthesia in a Second Life Operating Room
David Antonacci and Stephanie Gerald
Univ. Of Kansas Medical Center
capabilites:
- social networking
- multimedia
- building/scripting
- economy
- user created
educational possibilities:
- exploring the tech itself
- communication medium – presenting, teaching, socializing in sl
- in world learning activities – simulation
Security:
- Private Islands can provide a safe, secure area. Only certain folks allowed.
The original reason for doing this is that they needed to be able to practice procedures and had limited hands-on tools (sim man)
Why sl? – low cost (free), they bought an island ($1000), rapid development
How they did it:
- photographed objects and texture of things in the room
- have to know every step of the procedure or experiment so they can program it.
- they decided to build their own objects so they had more control and they needed to be very realistic.
- Had to determine the visual cues
- had to determine the user feedback
- had to have a final performance eval to let them know how they did. Had to figure out how to capture what was happening and sending it to the prof.
- Multi user – only one person can do it at a time and they can prevent others from going in once someone started.
Object types:
- main controller (smart) records what is being clicked on, the order and sends it to the prof.
- Primary objects – the things they needed to use.
- Secondary objects – transparent until used by the primary object.
- tertiary objects
- background – not scripted
They ran usability testing
this target group needed to know how to use the simulation NOT everything there was to know about sl. Their training (10 min) was very focused.
When the simulation is finished the results are emailed to the instructor.
Applications
- learning complex physical procedures
- science experiments
- hhp experiments.
How long and many people did it take?: 1 hr per object. Built objects in photoshop.
I like the idea of creating simulations in Second Life and getting that idea was beneficial. Overall, however, I would have liked to see a bit more about how they did it in SL and less about all the steps in a nurseing simulation itself.
