School of Health and Life Sciences – Virtual Worlds

Health Literacy Event in Second Life to Promote Awareness about Women’s Heart Health and Heart Attack

To help promote the importance of health literacy and to raise awareness about heart health, I co-hosted an event last Sunday May 20 with Elisabeth Marrapodi/Brielle Coronet/SL (Library Director at Trinitas Regional Medical Center, a teaching hospital in New Jersey) at our main island in Second Life. During the event people were able to test their knowledge about heart attack signs and symptoms for both men and women. This was combined with live streaming bagpipe music by real life Pipe Major Rik Xaris/SL from Scotland.

This event formed part of Elisabeth’s IRB approved research study which was designed in collaboration with a nursing education team. The study focuses on improving health literacy for heart attack, stroke and commonly used medical terminology through interactive gaming within a virtual world setting and investigates whether this newly learned information influences their future health care decisions. This research study was awarded a National Library of Medicine/ National Institutes of Health Small Projects Grant and was also recognized by the Medical Library Association’s Hospital Libraries Section Award for Research. Elisabeth has presented at national and international conferences about this study.

During the event I was also able to answer questions about my own PhD study which I am currently recruiting for. My study as you know is about health literacy skills of people who access health information in a 3D virtual world, looking at how people seek out, understand and use health information and how this might influence physical world health behaviour. Information about the study can be found next to Elizabeth’s exhibit.

As of today over 40 avatars have accessed the heart health information and taken the pre and post quiz survey.
The information will be available at GCU main Sim until this Sunday 27th May Slurl http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Glasgow%20Caledonian/109/114/23
For more info please IM Brielle Coronet in SL or Me Kali Pizzaro SL

My Colleague in the School of Health and Life Sciences Dr Jane Guiller has been using Second Life on a honours-level module in Cyberpsychology since 2009. Jane explains here how she uses Second life in the module.

“Cyberpsychology can be defined as the study of human behaviour and mental processes in the context of human-technology interaction. This is a rapidly growing sub-area of the discipline and this module was the first of its kind to be offered at a Scottish university and one of only a handful in the UK.
Use of Second Life is essential to the learning and teaching strategy used on this blended learning module as it allows student to experience many of the phenomena that we are discussing first hand. Students start off in by exploring the resources in the Saltire Centre in Second Life. There is a notable positive reaction to the Saltire Centre in Second Life. For most, it is a ‘strange new world’ and being able to navigate their way through a location that is familiar to them in real-life helps with their orientation. We also use this to discuss the phenomenology of the internet and reflect on how our experience of the Saltire Centre offline, influences our experience of it online.
Students go through the process of avatar creation near the start of the trimester, when we do our lectures on identity and self-presentation online. Following the lectures on Health Issues on the Internet and ELearning, we visit a number of relevant sources in Second Life including the Virtual Hallucinations Project, Autism Awareness Center and Virtual Ability Island: Disability Awareness and Support. We also visit other Departments of Psychology in Second Life, such as the problem-based learning resources at the University of Derby.

Group of students waiting to explore the Virtual Hallucinations Project in Second Life

We now have our very own private Cyberpsychology area on the GCU island where the students and I meet for synchronous online seminars, in addition to our asynchronous online seminars and ‘Adventures in Second Life’ blog in GCU Learn”.

If you want to contact Jane leave a comment or email her on J.Gullier@gcu.ac.uk

Hi folks,

I am currently recruiting participants for my PhD. If you or someone you know has accessed health information in a 3D virtual world I would love to interview you or them for my study. This could be access to a sim with health information in the form of a game, quiz, slide show, interactive objects or a talk given by a healthcare practitioner/provider. The first phase pilot study is now complete. However, I am now recruting for the full full phase 1 study (if you have already agreed to take part and have not been interviewed I will be contacting you soon). This Phase 1 study will include being interviewed in Second Life in a private area of Glasgow Caledonian University Second Life Sim. I am particularly looking for people from UK or Europe as well as the rest of the world. If you want more information please IM me in Second Life (Kali Pizzaro) or pick up the information from
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Glasgow Caledonian/112/113/23
or email me at Evelyn.McElhinney@gcu.ac.uk

Cheers Evelyn/Kali

GCU’s School of Health and Life Sciences has joined up with the University of Richmond’s Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, in an exciting new collaboration which is set within GCUs land in the 3D virtual World Second Life.  Dr Joe Essid Director of the Writing Centre explains his use of virtual worlds “The Virtual House of Usher began as a faculty-student partnership sponsored by the University of Richmond’s Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology in the summer of 2009.  The project uses virtual-world technology to create an interactive story, with faculty actors in the roles of Richmond native Edgar Allan Poe’s characters Roderick and Madeline Usher. Students, in the role of Poe’s narrator, try to avoid the dreadful fate that overcomes the Usher family in the original tale. Using the original story as both springboard for interactive learning and questions about the nature of literary narrative, four courses in literature or Rhetoric and Communications Studies have used the online House. The experience is that of improvisational acting in a game-like space where students must find clues, resolve conflicting stories, and pursue personal goals while staying as guests in a dreary mansion just off the Yorkshire coast in the year 1847. The explorations of Poe’s obsessions and obsessed characters, in the words of one recent participant, “was in my opinion the most privileged opportunity of the entire interactive experience because it allowed me to not only become a part of the story, but to resolve the characters’ problems in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story that traditionally remained unresolved.”
 
It is hoped that this will lead to further collaboration between GCU and University of Richmond in other disciplines. For further information or a tour of the House of Usher please email Evelyn.McElhinney@gcu.ac.uk , Lecturer in the Department of Health and Community Sciences or Instant Message her in Second Life – Kali Pizzaro.

Hi All,

I am reaching the end of my two year action research project. However, I will be presenting the findings at the 10th Annual International Nursing Simulation/Learning Resource Centers Conference in Orlando in June. Interestingly I just met the Lecturer last week in Second Life who is presenting after me. I will also be presenting a poster on the evaluation of volunteers’ experiences of allowing nurses to take their real life health history in SL.

Andy is still working with Jan on the x-ray project which is coming along nicely.

I have also started a VW HealthEd International Community of Practice. So if you are in the health field or a learning technologist working with health practitioners and wish to join please IM me in SL: Kali Pizzaro

Evelyn/Kali

Below is a poster presentation from some of my fellow lecturers about research they did with 3rd year nursing students. If you have any questions about the study or the results don’t hesiate to leave us a wee reply with an email or your avatar name. Or IM me in SL – Kali Pizzaro.

Click the bottom tab to view on Slideshare if you wish.

Well the new semester starts soon. I will be doing more teaching in SL using Colin the virtual patient and his new heart and lung sounds which are embeded in his chest. This is controlled by the lecturer who can change the sounds – normal, aortic stenosis etc (great work Andy).

I will also be teaching history taking and look forward to welcoming new volunteers who let my students take their real life health history from the comfort of their homes.

This wil be the second round of my action research project. Data will be collected using student and lecturer diaries. Hope to present the results later in the year at a conference in the USA.

We are also working on a web interface which will allow us to add to the case based histories which will speak to our AIML bots and add any missing questions to the answers. This will help create and refine cases.

Well that’s me at the moment, catch you later, Kali/Evelyn

Hi All,

This poster was presented at the Higher Education Academy Conference 22nd-23rd June 2010

This is round one of an action reserach project I am undertaking. The poster has some of the the conclusions drawn from the students diaries and self -assessment of group work. I have still to collate the data from their presence and immersion questionnaire. What fun SPSS!

We are continuing to work on the patient chat-bots and recruiting more volunteers over the summer.

regards Evelyn and all the team

Hi all,

The first round results of my action research project on teaching healthcare students in virtual worlds will be up within the next month. Some very positve data and a great amount of work done by the students. Also I will update you soon on my work with real people who have volunteered to allow my students to take their medical history via Second Life. Early days with this project but hoping to recruit more people over the summer.

Theresa Price has just returned from a succesful NETNEP conference in Australia (just got back due to the ash).

regards Kali/Evelyn

We are building on and developing a few new projects. An action research project is ongoing and will be evaluated soon. We will share our initial results on the blog. Do please keep an eye out.
Please feel free to comment on any of our work so far. Also if you are interested in any collaboration, please contact us.

Check out the video below for our work so far.

Regards Kali/ Evelyn.McElhinney@gcal.ac.uk on behalf of the team at the School of Health