There was a big surge in interest in virtual reality as a training tool about five years ago when Second Life, and several other virtual reality tools became widely available. Much of that initial excitement has died down. I suspect that there are a number of reasons that it has faded but one reason may be that many people did not use the technology very well. I went to a number of presentations in Second Life, but most were merely lectures, which can get boring, no matter what the technology.
Lectures aren't the only things that you can do in Second Life though. I think that one very promising use of the technology might be for training that involves role playing. Virtual reality offers some potential advantages over face-to-face role playing - including alleviating a little of the embarrassment that people can feel when they're the center-of-attention.
Two recent blog posts (first, second) by Robin Heyden describe the experience of delivering continuing medical education on motivational interviewing to family physicians. The training included a 40 minute presentation on motivational interviewing, followed by practice sessions.
There are lots of caveats, including the usual problems that new user often have accessing all of the media in Second Life, but overall, it's a very interesting step and one that I'll be paying attention on the future.
Here is the presentation portion of the training:
No comments:
Post a Comment