Practice Makes Perfect in Virtual World

Public health officials from the California Department of Health Services have created a massive online virtual training program. Researchers from the University of California-Davis Health System re-created a 3-D model of the California Exposition and State Fair in Second Life and conducted the training within that environment.

Here is how it worked.

Virtual patients flowed through the clinic, while staff members role played. The program can be adjusted to simulate different numbers of patients. For instance, it could be ramped up from 100 to 150 patients per hour. Dr. Peter Yellowlees (principal investigator and a professor of psychiatry at UC-Davis) said his team also built quiz tools to assess how well people have grasped what they've learned.

He said he believes the project was a success because they made the virtual environment look reasonably like the real thing. Also, feedback from state employees indicated the program worked quite well. Nevertheless, California has yet to expand its use. "That was 18 months ago and they haven't taken us up on it yet," he added. "They are trying to see how it fits into their long-term goals."

Check out the article Virtual Worlds Help Public Safety Officials Practice for Real-Life Threats
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Virtual World Tour 2008

Here is a great video providing a broad perspective on all types of virtual worlds. Well Done!Sharon Burns.



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Creating a Hospital in 3D to Explore Possibilities

Check out the operating room in 3D.

Here is an example of using a 3D world as a back drop for creating a video to highlight desired changes or to show a "What-If" scenario. As the article Virtual Worlds Case Study--Second Health states:

The explicit outcomes of the project were three videos, each portraying the way a medical situation would be handled under a wholly new system of healthcare — one based on the central idea of wellness as opposed to illness.

To that end, an entire hospital was built in Second Life that filled an entire sim. It was fully equipped, and included every manner of bed, gurney, and tool used by medical staff, including sophisticated diagnostic equipment from digital sonography to CAT scans and MRI suites; fully-equipped examination rooms, offices, and operating theaters; and suites for anesthesia, arthroscopic surgery, trauma, and cardiac catheterization.

Animations were created to simulate heart attacks, limps, and the ways in which care givers would interact with their patients. All the uniforms used by these care givers had to be precise, and instantly recognizable by residents in the UK. Of particular importance was to represent life in a contemporary city in the UK, and avatars had to be created to represent all manner of people, large and small, fit and not-so-fit, and representing a wide range of ethnic groups and races in both their form and clothing. The hospital continues to be used for medical and other training.

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Visualizing Data in a 3D World

Not only can 3D worlds be used for the recreation of physcial spaces (not the best use) but they can also be used for "other worldly" interfaces...one such example is the visualization of information in ways not prevously possible.

Visualizing 3D data
Check out this article Visualization of Statistics in Virtual Reality

As the article states:

Visualization of statistics in virtual reality offers new possibilities for the representation of statistics. One can operate, inspect and thus physically experience them in the virtual reality by means of an avatar....The virtual statistic space consists of different layers with different topics. The user can operate and navigate these layers by means of two interface devices. Each layer is subdivided into five areas that examine the different topics in different intensity. Sensors of approximation and touch note the position and the line of sight of the user avatar and induce the representation of dynamic information

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Alternatives to Second Life

Here is a list of alternatives to Second Life.

Forterra Systems Inc.

The company offers private, secure virtual worlds with tailored solutions based on industry and customer specific needs. The solutions are designed by Forterra to meet enterprise IT security and privacy needs. The flagship product of Forterra is OLIVE™ (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment). OLIVE is an open, distributed client-server platform for building private virtual worlds. The architecture scales from single user applications up to thousands of concurrent users. The SDK provides an API, licensable 3D content, 3rd party system integrations, and tools to create and edit 3D content and scenarios.

Icarus Studios

The company offers tools and products for createing Massively Multiplayer Oline environments and virtual worlds. The flagship Icarus Platform is actually a suite of products that feature a back end designed to drive a wide variety of front end experiences. The platform is built according to open standards, specifically to be extensible and easily integrated with partner systems. This includes compatibility with industry standard tools such as 3ds Max, Collada, and other 3D applications.

Teleplace. (formerly known as Qwaq)

The company offers private, secure virtual workspace and meeting application. Teleplace provides an environment for distributed teams to communicate and collaborate on multiple applications and documents in real time. Teleplace’s vPresence™ technology securely combines VOIP, chat, and video with a virtual application command center, and can be deployed either behind the firewall or in the cloud. Teleplace enables an organization to create a virtual operations center in which sensitive and confidential information is developed, discussed, and used to make decisions and solve problems, create a space to manage projects, facilitate meetings, conduct corporate training or establish a virtual office.

Unisfair

The company offers “virtual events” and “virtual environments” for marketing, recruiting and augmenting physical conferences. The flagship product is the virtual event experience. The company offers a number of tools such as microsites—a customizable branded web site tied to the event, virtual venues—a main hall, conference hall, exhibition hall and a resource center, and attendee tools—briefcase to store information, personal profile, and search capabailities.

Virtual Heroes

The company offers creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for Federal Systems, Healthcare and Corporate Training markets. The applications offered facilitate highly interactive, self-paced learning and instructor-led, distributed team training. The flagship product is the Virtual Heroes Advanced Learning Technology (A.L.T.) platform. Major components of this platform include the Unreal® Engine 3 by Epic Games and Dynamic Virtual Human Technology (DVHT) created by Virtual Heroes. DVHT combines electronic computer game technology with a digital human physiology engine, digital pharmacokinetic drug models, accurate biomechanical parameters and artificial intelligence subroutines for realistic virtual humans and environment.

ProtonMedia

The company offers a virtual environment along with several social networking tools build right in. The flagship product, ProtoSphere is build from the ground up for learning. It contains SCORM compliant interfaces and the ability to have learners appear in virtual classrooms, buildings, airfields and other environments. One of the hallmarks of the product is its inclusion of a virtual doctor’s office and the seamless incorporation of 2D learning content directly into the virtual world and the ability find individuals with similar interests through the social networking application.

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Think Virtual Worlds: Not Second Life

Here is this Month's ASTD Big Question:

Second Life Training?


More specifically:

• In what situations, do you believe it makes sense to develop a learning experience that will be delivered within Second Life?
  
• If you were to develop a training island in Second Life, what kind of environment and artifacts would you consider essential for teaching?
  
• Just as there are considerable differences in blended learning and virtual classroom training, what are some of the major differences (surprises) in training within virtual worlds?

First I am going to answer the question with two videos and then, for the next couple of weeks, I am going to post some examples of 3D learning that I think are effective. But first I want to say that we need to get away from thinking the only 3D learning envrionemnt is Second Life. Many other 3D learning worlds exist and many of them are doing some extraordinary things...worth examining. So I will look at both Second Life activity but also activity in other 3D worlds.

Here are the Two Videos. The first one I created and the second was created by my colleague Tony O'Driscoll.




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Avoiding Virtual World Mistakes

A group of avatars in a corporate virtual world wondering what is going on?
Organizations seem to rush into virtual worlds with little planning or forethought and then wonder why their virtual world experience was a failure. In fact, according to the technology analyst firm Gartner, nine out of 10 virtual world projects fail within 18 months. I am not surprised. Like any initiative, a plan and purpose is needed to make the venture work. If you are just in it because everyone else is "in-world" or you think it might be neat, then you are in it for the wrong reasons.

Here is a great article highlighting some "lessons learned" for creating a successful virtual world presence called Corporate virtual worlds implode at hyper speed

1) The transition from a traditional web presence to a virtual world presence marks the transition from webpages to web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people. If you don't have something for people to do or experience in an interactive way then people will not stay. These are social networks or experiential learning environments...a design set up so avatars can just loiter or hang out doesn't work. See my post Scripting a Virtual World Learning Event.

2)An effective virtual world project starts by focusing on the audience’s needs and ultimately delivering the technology to support the community of people. It doesn't start by focusing on the technology (no learning process should ever start that way...none.)

3) Realistic graphics and physical behaviour count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to the target audience. (which means some research is needed to determine if the target audience values or needs to be in a virtual world or if they are comfortable learning in that environment).
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Physicians Resist CDSSs

I was doing some research for a presentation titled "Overcoming Resistance to Incorporating Technology Into the Hospital Environment" that I am giving shortly (today) and uncovered some really interesting information.

First, getting Doctors to use new technology is a big deal and hard to do. Thus a large number of articles in medical journals are dedicated to the subject. If you don't believe me about the resistance, check out Wendy Wickham's post on her blog leading to many stories along this topic. In the Middle of the Curve: Archive of EHR / EMR Posts

Second, one of the newest medical innovations out there are CDSS (Clinical Decision Support Systems) in training we'd call them Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS). Same concept, the system provides the doctor with information he or she needs to make decisions on how to treat a specific patient. But here is a really interesting finding:

An empirical study was conducted where physicians were required to use a computer system to solve a number of clinical patient problems with the help of a diagnostic decision support system [CDSS].

Although 75% of the participants believed that computers were useful in daily clinical work, only two-thirds of the group could imagine a theoretical possibility of computers supporting physicians in their diagnosis.

Of greater interest was that, in those cases, where the physicians’ diagnosis was incorrect and the system's differential diagnosis was correct, the physician did not reconsider his/her own diagnostic opinion. When asked for their opinion about the system’s differential diagnosis, the participants indicted that they found it very useful when the system confirmed their diagnosis but marginally relevant to their judgment when the system refuted their diagnosis

--Ridderikhoff J. and Ven Herk, B. 2000 in article titled "Who is Afraid of the System? Doctors' Attitude Towards Diagnostic Systems". International Journal of Medial Informatics as found in E-health Systems Diffusion And Use.

Fascinating, when the system agreed with their diagnosis, it was helpful and correct. When the system disagreed the system was "marginally relevant."

As we rush to create electronic performance support systems to make learning "part of the workflow," we may want to consider the human element and think of how we can help our learners to become more comfortable with automated decision support and not just assume that they would "love" a decision support system...maybe they won't...maybe they will resist the "support" and still perform as they have always performed. As designers of these systems, we need to think of ways to encourage acceptance and use.

Any ideas?
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Award Press Release

In April, I was honored with an award for innovative excellence in teaching, learning and technology. Here is the photograph and the press release.

Karl Kapp poses with teaching award.

LOCAL COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR RECEIVES AWARD FOR INNOVATIVE EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING, LEARNING, AND TECHNOLOGY

International Conference on College Teaching and Learning Honors 40 Teaching Faculty

The International Conference on College Teaching and Learning and the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning congratulate Karl M. Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University, recipient of the 2008 Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology. The awards ceremony, held on April 16, 2008, in Jacksonville, Florida, honored 40 teaching faculty from across the U.S. and around the world for their innovative contributions to teaching and learning in higher education.

“This award is a way for us to recognize the highly creative contributions that are made day in and day out by outstanding teaching faculty in colleges and universities around the world,” said Jeana Davis, coordinator of the conference. “It also provides a venue for them to share those ideas with their colleagues at other institutions—improving higher education teaching and learning opportunities for all of us.”

A complete list of this year’s award recipients can be found at the conference Website. [Some really talented and forward thinking faculty members at this conference.]

The International Conference on College Teaching and Learning was established in 1988 to promote the exchange of ideas to improve the teaching and learning process through innovative and effective uses of pedagogy and technology in higher education. Complete conference details are available online at www.teachlearn.org.

It was an honor to be nominated and to receive this award. Thank you to my Dean who provided the nomination and to Karen who worked on the application. Also to my Mother, Father and to the academy and...well you get the idea. But I especially want to thank my STUDENTS who provide energy, ideas and enthusiasm that makes it all possible
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The Art of Making Video Games

I recently heard someone say "The next step in using video games for education is to teach students to create their own games." Actually, this concept has been around for years (many, many years) and is now gaining wider spread press and adoption (think Logo).

It seems like things in the learning field have a way of circling back. Here are some resources that you might find handy.

First check out the Fortune article Computer games as liberal arts? Then check out Kids Creating Computer Games

Also check out:
A master's thesis on Bongo titled Bongo: A Kids’ Programming Environment for Creating Video Games on the Web

And check out:
Making a Video Game from Start to Finish

And check out:
How to Make a Video Game for Free

And see a great game engine and game development community:
Garage Games. This the site of the well known Torque game engine. Used for many different games from educational to "anything-but."

Along those same lines but geared specifically for kids is Alice--You need to take a look at Alice if you haven't already.

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Tonight...I will be Appearing On Local News Station

For those of you in the Northeastern Pennsylvania area, tonight at 7:00 pm, I will be appearing on CBS Television affiliate station WYOU. The show is called WYOU Interactive and tonight we are discussing the topic of Technology & Morals.

We will explore the following types of questions:
Is technology corrupting our morals? Are realistic and violent video games desensitizing our youth? Are online social networking websites like Myspace actually harmful to hormone-crazed teens? We'll tackle these topics and more starting at 7 pm.

So, I will be addressing the issue of whether or not technology makes us immorale or just facilitates what we would be doing anyway...interesting questions and discussion.

I've appeared on this show before so, I guess this is my encore. You can read about my previous television appearance on my post Roll The Tape!

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Mobile Learning Via Audio

One thing many people seem to forget when thinking about "mobile learning" is that the one universal application that runs across all mobile phones is voice. Some really inventive voice-focused training modules can be developed and delivered all with a mish-mash of mobile phones.

They can be linked to an automated voice systems and sales reps or others can simply "call in" for some training. One company that has been doing some work in this area if OnPoint Digital. Check out their Cellcast web site for more details.

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Pictures from the Innovations in e-learning conference

Lots of great stuff happening the last day of the Innovations in e-learning conference, check out the great notes again taken by Wendy at In the Middle of the Curve. Thanks Wendy, Great Job...killing zombies has paid off!!! Here are some photos taken the last day.

Here I stand with Sid Meier, game developer guru, apparently, we are both a little blurry for the photo.

Sid was great. He gave a great keynote address called Help, I Can't Stop Learning!(blogged by Wendy) For those of you who may not know the impact Sid has had on the video and PC game industry, here are some of this best known titles:


Anders Gronstedt, a frequent lecturer on the topic of Second Life provides some insightful information in one of the sessions.


Henry Kelly, the President of the Federation of American Scientists talks about "The Mashup of Virtual Worlds and Learning" at the conference.

If you are considering going to a regional conference in the East...I think this is it.
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Innovation in e-learning Conference

Innovation in e-learning Conference, originally uploaded by professorkapp.

Having fun at the conference.

Here is a list of bloggers attending the Innovation in e-Learning Conference.

From left to right are Wendy Wickham, Mark Oelhert, Stephen Downes, and Karl Kapp.

Innovation in E-Learning: Presentation Notes

As requested, here are the slides from my presentation at the Innovation in e-Learning Conference

Slides:
Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Transfering Knowledge (these are not the exact slides but are very close.)

Similar Presentation:
Also, here is a post linking to a similar presentation I have given before on the topic. They are a series of YouTube videos.Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Transfering Knowledge

Related Web Site:
Also, please visit the book's web site, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.
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Innovations in E-Learning Conference

As part II of my week at conferences, I am now at the Innovations in E-Learning Conference held at George Mason University in Virginia.

This is a small venue with about 250 people which makes it a great conference, small intimate and a chance to get to know and meet a lot of people.

I was walking into the auditorium for the keynote presentation and was taking my seat as a women was typing away on her laptop. She turns to me and says "Are you Karl Kapp?" I said "Yes" and she said "Hi I am Wendy Wickham." As I get older, I need more time to process information and so I think to my self, hey I know Wendy...but from where? Then in few seconds it hits me.

She is the author of the blog, In the Middle of the Curve. I read Wendy all the time. So we had a great discussion about Hockey, Cats and maybe some learning stuff. It turns out she is blogging the conference and doing a fantastic job. I don' know how she types so fast.

Check out Wendy's Wrap Up-Day 1 post as well as her other posts including one of the Keynote addresses, my presentation on Gadgets, Games and Gizmos and Stephen Downes keynote, Light, Agile and Flexible as well as a mobile learning presentation by Mark Oehlert, Dr. David Metcalf and Judy Brown. This conference has some really interesting presenters all together in a really small group. It is fantastic!

In fact, Mark Oehlert and I had the opportunity to do an impromptu session when one of the presenters wasn't able to make it. We named the presentation Gadgets, Games and Web 2.0...it was a mash up of other presentations we have both done in the past. It worked great considering we have never met in person before (although he was an awesome reviewer for Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.)

Here we are in action



Also, I got to meet another well known blogger, Stephen Downes. Stephen and I have had a number of exchanges about different areas of disagreement or points of clarification over the years (although who hasn't gotten a clarification from Stephen) and most of the time, he is right on the money. So it was a pleasure to meet him in person and discuss...hockey. We even had a slight disagreement with hockey since I am a Penguins fan and he had picked Detroit to win. Sadly, Stephen was right that last night would end the series. Well, there is always next year.

If you missed the conference, check out Stephen's presentation Light, Agile and Flexible.

He blogs about the conference and took a fantastic picture of lightening from the storm we encountered while at the conference (it was a really violent storm.) Wendy blogs about it in her post An Interesting Interlude.

Here Stephen and I discuss hockey.


To end the night, I had a great dinner with an alumni of the program Ken. We had a little trouble finding something to eat because many places didn't have power due to the storm but we managed and it was great to catch up with Ken and to hear what he has been up to.

All in all, a great conference day...storm and all.
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STC Conference

This has been a busy conference week for me. On Monday, I attended the 55th Annual Society for Technical Communication conference in Philadephia, PA. You can see the conference web site here. I was only at the conference briefly but had a great audience for my presentation with some great questions and discussion.

You can find a copy of my presentation and the presentations of many of the of the folks who lead sessions at the Materials page of the STC Conference page. The files are zipped but just unzip them and you are ready to go. I am session code ED 4A or just search for "Kapp" in your browser when you are on that page.

Also, I got to talk to my friend Jane Bozarth for a little while before my presentation, a delightful discussion and I thank her for including me in the conference. You can check out her Blog at Bozarthzone. Or check out here latest book (to which I did contribute some content).


I've blogged about here book before in Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work.
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Immerse Yourself in Another Language

Sneak preview of the Arabic Version of 3DLanguage an immersive learning environment.

The folks who created 3D Language Spain which I have blogged about before in Learning Spanish in a Game have now created a couple more interesting and highly entertaining products (not to mention Educational.) The goal of the company is to make "language learning truly immersive, engaging, and fun." If you enter into their immersive environment and tour around, I think you'll agree they've met their goal. (they provided me with some exclusive screen captures and such so check them out.)

One new product is English as a Second Language (ESL) or America and the other is Arabic. Both products are in alpha release – the company puts forth a concerted effort to gather feedback and refine what they are doing before releasing the official product. So they want to get it out their and have lots of folks "kick the tires."

Picture of Hector walking with a friend in the ESL version of 3DLanguage: America.

If any of you are interested in providing alpha feedback, the company would love to hear from you. Just email them at info@3dlanguage.net and let them know you saw this posting on my blog and you would like to help test the alpha version. Or, if you have some input into what you'd like to see next as a language or as a practice environment for a particular language, let them know.

Finally, another cool thing they are doing is starting a new Social Network for language learners, which will bring the 3dlanguage community another resource in language learning and leverage Web 2.0 tools to build a language community centered on different languages.

So if you have a few moments, stop by Coccinella Development and check out what they are doing. I think you will be impressed.
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Using Technology to Cheat

Here is a video that shows the clever lengths students and others will go to cheat on an exam or test. As educators, we need to be aware of these methods so we can foil them. Or if we are in a big meeting with a client, we just might want to use this method to bolster your memory on specific facts without having those annoying note cards.



Or, as an exercise in creative thinking, why not create a test and encourage learners to come up with the most clever ways they can think of to cheat.

By the way, in the corporate world, we call "cheat sheets" ... job aids and encourage their use.

An entire chapter in my book is dedicated to cheat codes and how the gamer generation uses these codes. I've also blogged on the topic before in
Cheat Codes: Friend or Foe and Hire that Kid!
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