Despite the be benefits of serious games and their growing popularity across many educational contexts, they generally have have fixed scenarios that cannot be easily modified, leading to predictable and dull experiences that can reduce user engagement. We recently introducedMoirai, a novel, no-code serious games authoring platform that allows educators with limited (if any) programming experience to use a diagram-based interface to create new modifications and customize serious game scenarios focused on decision and communication skills development. In this paper, we describe a usability study that saw medical educators with limited programming knowledge create a pre-defined serious game scenario usingMoirai. Results indicate a high degree of usability and revealed various changes that can be made to improveMoirai.

The VR-SIM Carers project is focused on developing a virtual reality-based simulation training platform (VRSTP) where dementia caregivers/care partners may safely practice different strategies and approaches to difficult caregiving scenarios without real-world consequences within an interactive 3D virtual world. Since no two caregiver situations are alike, it is necessary to build multiple VR scenarios. However, developing each scenario is time-consuming, requiring extensive programming knowledge. Here, we briefly outline our preliminary work developing a graphical-based, “no-code” authoring platform that allows educators and clinicians with limited, if any, programming experience to develop new, or modify existing scenarios specific to VR-SIM Carers.

In Canada, the City of Oshawa recently became a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities to promote healthy, active aging and good quality of life for older residents. Part of this strategy includes educating municipal employees on age-friendly cultural competencies. To facilitate this, we have developed an innovative and immersive virtual environment that couples serious gaming with a gamified educational network learning management system. The virtual environment will provide an interactive and engaging learning platform to teach age-friendly cultural competencies to municipal staff.

This paper presents the results of a preliminary experiment that examined the accuracy of drill depth perception using auditory cues only. The results of this experiment will form the basis of a larger study that will investigate the effects of simulated drilling within medical-based training/educational tasks for online teaching employing non-specialized, consumer-level devices/hardware available to trainees in their homes.

This mixed-method research addresses two problems: 1) the need to understand more deeply the lived experiences of individuals with mental illness to inform the design of a virtual serious game (VSG) and; 2) the need for more accessible and interactive mental health VSGs for nursing student learning before attending community placements. We began with an Ontario-wide collection of individual narratives about living with mental illness using qualitative methods and then applied the findings in two ways. First, we incorporated the person-centered feedback into the serious VSGs’ storyline, and secondly, we developed and refined the VSG prototype. Next, we will implement the VSG into the nursing curriculum for evaluation of learning outcomes.

Despite its importance in the real-world, manual (hand) dexterity is often ignored in medical-based virtual training environments that have traditionally focused on cognitive and affective skills development. Psychomotor (technical) skills, particularly those related to manual dexterity, are fundamental to various medical procedures and ignoring them in virtual based training tools can lead to a sub-optimal training experience. Here, we present a novel, consumer-level data glove that provides accurate user interactions involving the proximal and medial phalanges, interactions that are relevant in many manual dexterity tasks. We also outline how this novel data glove is being incorporated into an existing serious gaming platform for anesthesia training that currently focuses on cognitive and affective skills development only. The addition of psychomotor skills development through the adoption of simulated tactile feedback will provide a more complete serious gaming training platform.

Cardiac auscultation is a routine medical examination whereby using a stethoscope placed over various regions of the patient's chest, a health care professional listens to the patient's hear murmurs to diagnose their heart condition. Cardiac auscultation training has evolved from relying on patient and audio recordings to employing simulation manikins, multimedia, mobile applications, and most recently digital simulations, including virtual reality (VR) that allows training without the limitations of physical laboratories. Typically, at a consumer-level VR headset orientation is used to identify areas of attention and trigger interactions, while high-end headsets make use of eye tracking. This paper presents a work in progress comparison between headset orientation and eye tracking employing two different VR controllers to understand focus on items on screen. Preliminary results indicate that participants spent a significant amount of time browsing the scene rather than relevant objects for the examination. With respect to the tracking methods, eye tracking was the most reliable, thus highlighting the need for thoughtful headset tracking. Future work will focus on a larger study to develop a tool to enhance VR headset interactions by understating how they compare to gaze captured data for more effective interactions and navigation in VR for successful training.

In this article, we present the anesthesia crisis scenario builder (ACSB) framework prototype that allows for the development of (or modification of existing) anesthesia crisis resource management-based virtual simulations. The ACSB framework was developed specifically to allow medical educators, who may have a limited (if any) programming/software development background, to replicate and edit anesthesia scenarios based on preprogrammed steps from the anesthetic crisis manual. The scenarios can be developed simply and intuitively using a graphical user interface. Results of a preliminary study examining the usability of the ACSB framework indicate the ease of creating a crisis scenario with limited, if any, programming knowledge.

Here we present a novel multi-player serious game for the purpose of cultural sensitivity competence training aimed at healthcare providers and trainees. The serious game allows for a wide variety of realistic culturally sensitive scenarios to be easily created and simulated.

The main aim of this paper is to analyze the existing Internet-based learning (IBL) literature as it pertains to health professions education to draw on common interpretations, and to propose a framework to implement IBL within the area of health professions education. Central to our approach is the incorporation of gamification within IBL to promote greater levels of engagement and motivation and thus enhance the learning experience.

Visual and auditory cues are important facilitators of user engagement in virtual environments and video games. Prior research supports the notion that our perception of visual fidelity (quality) is influenced by auditory stimuli. Understanding exactly how our perception of visual fidelity changes in the presence of multimodal stimuli can potentially impact the design of virtual environments, thus creating more engaging virtual worlds and scenarios. Stereoscopic 3-D display technology provides the users with additional visual information (depth into and out of the screen plane). There have been relatively few studies that have investigated the impact that auditory stimuli have on our perception of visual fidelity in the presence of stereoscopic 3-D. Building on previous work, we examine the effect of auditory stimuli on our perception of visual fidelity within a stereoscopic 3-D environment.