School of Health and Life Sciences – Virtual Worlds

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

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

Accurate selection of exposure factors when x-raying patients is of vital importance to ensure repeat exposures are not required. Due to the use of ionising radiation it is not possible for students to currently practice giving people a range of exposures to see what effect manipulation of exposure factors would have. Experience is currently gained by working alongside clinicians in the clinical environment. Feedback from students currently suggests that selection of exposure factors is an area where they feel they have insufficient practical experience. Giving students a tool where they can practice cause and effect on images dependant on exposure factor selection would enable students to develop necessary practical skills in a safe way.

A virtual x-ray environment is currently under development on Second Life, the aim of which is to enable undergraduate diagnostic imaging students to manipulate exposure factors for a chosen patient and body part. The resultant image will be displayed thereby enabling the student to gain skills in choosing accurate exposure factors. The student will be able to visualise whether their selected exposure factors, variables being kV, mA, time and distance, would have resulted in the image being under-,correctly or over-exposed. It is hoped that over time students will be able to select from a range of options e.g. gender, age, body build, body part.

For more info leave a comment for Jan little aka Bod Mavendorf

This is Colin. He is a virtual patient Bot who can talk. He is used to help qualified nurses to take a diagnostic patient history. He also has embedded heart sounds in his chest. The students can click on his chest in the correct anatomical position to hear the heart sounds which link back to the history they have just taken. Keep your eyes peeled for a video demo of Colin Soon!

Regards Kali Pizzaro aka real Life Evelyn McElhinney Lecturer, Andy Whiteford Technician aka AndyW Blackburn