Update: I’ve also had a paper accepted for the Ed-Media conference in Toronto at the end of June – and I’m going. Hooray!!!
We had some pretty exciting news just before Christmas, Penny Neuendorf (my boss) and I have been accepted to present a brief paper (15 mins) at the upcoming AACE Global Learn conference in Penang (Malaysia) in mid May. Until recently the thought of this would have scarified me but having made a successful presentation at the Moodleposium as well as seeing the standard of presentations at a range of conferences, I’m actually rather excited.
This is the abstract for the paper
Redesigning Role-plays for a Virtual World in Health Education
Designing effective teaching and learning scenarios for virtual worlds is a challenging new field in health education. This paper explores a Canberra Institute of Technology project intended to reduce some of the logistical challenges of practicum placements in the Allied Health Industry by using role-plays set in health workplaces simulated in Virtual Worlds. While still in a trial phase, this project has already created a deeply immersive and engaging educational environment. One of the core elements of this has been a fundamental re-think of the design of role-plays which has included deepening the knowledge scaffolding approach provided to learners before the activity, increasing levels of health practitioner participation and making more effective use of the technology in the reflection process.
