Developing a virtual-world simulation

Simulation-based training has been an integral part of health-sciences education for many years, and is becoming increasingly important with the shift towards competency-based education. Virtual worlds have emerged as an effective way to deliver realistic, collaborative training in complex processes, which is consistent with competency-based training and assessment. We have developed MeRiTS, a virtual world-based platform for creating training simulations, to provide students in a wide range of disciplines with this kind of training. Furthermore, through these student training experiences, we will be able to provide a rigorous, comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of conducting scenario-based training in virtual worlds.