Turk Talk: human-machine hybrid virtual scenarios for professional education

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Virtual scenarios provide a means for creating rich and complex online cases for health professional students to explore. However, the response options available to the learner are usually predefined, which limits the utility of virtual patients. Using artificial intelligence or natural language processing to accommodate such flexibility is expensive and hard to design. This project description lays out an alternative approach to making virtual scenarios more adaptable and interactive. Using OpenLabyrinth, an open-source educational research platform, we modified the interface and functionality to provide a human-computer hybrid interface, where a human facilitator can interact with learners from within the online case scenario. Using a design-based research approach, we have iteratively improved our cases, workflows and scripts and interface designs. The next step is testing this new functionality in a variety of situations. This report describes the pilot implementation of this pilot project. It includes the background, rationale, objectives, learning and educational designs, and implications for software development. The costs and time required to modify the software were much lower than anticipated. Facilitators managed text input from multiple concurrent learners. Learners noted a delay while waiting for the facilitator's response, but denied becoming frustrated. The implementation and use of this new technique seems promising for training and assessment purposes related to developing effective communication skills. This report also explores the provisional implications arising from the study so far.