Nursing Training: 3D Game with Learning Objectives

Practical training is an essential component of nursing students' preparation to entering the workforce and making decisions that impact patients' health and often lives. We designed a 3D game (VI-MED) to support virtual training to be used as a precursor and as a supplement to real practical training. The VI-MED system has two main components: 1. A gaming component which simulates a hospital environment with patients generated for each session and a full spectrum of interventions that the player can use on the patients, and 2. An Assessment component which monitors the players progress, updates their profile, and customizes their experience with the games accordingly. We discuss here the design of VI-MED with a special focus on the modeling of the user's (student) profile and the modeling of the patients that get generated at each game session. Both of these are driven by the learning outcomes that the nursing faculty sets for their students.