Teaching undergraduate nursing students renal care in a 3D Gaming Environment

The original program on renal care was developed between 1995-1997 using 'Toolbook' software, which presented the content in a non interactive graphical way without tracking student progress or recording of results and was available to students via a CDRom. The content described the clinical decision making process that practitioners had to follow when diagnosing and managing renal diseases. These processes followed a learning sequence whereby a series of decisions lead to the next phase of the diagnosis and treatment. The purpose was to simulate the live clinical decision making processes for practitioners. An additional build-in 'Ask the Expert'-button (Help function) guided students in correct clinical decision making. One of the problems encountered in the original program is that the navigation is not intuitive to the user and students could get easily lost while going through the step-by-step introduction as well as the lack of interactivity. The original program still has relevant learning content, but the software, illustrations and tracking of learning outcomes are out-of-date. Therefore a re-design of the original program using a 3D Gaming Environment with updated content is being undertaken. This paper will discuss the methodology underpinning the new development, a demonstration of the program and the results from student feedback which will be undertaken in February - March 2009.