Branching pathway virtual patient scenarios - University of Edinburgh

I took a look at this case study as we are considering creating virtual patient cases for our nursing and social work programs using similar software.

The University of Edinbugh use Labyrinth (software) for groups of students (in year five) in their department of veterinary medicine to create branching case scenarios. Students create these scenarios over one week of a three week elective. They create them collaboratively and then present them to faculty who work through them several times taking different paths each time and providing feedback to students.

Although there has been little formal evaluation of this activity and there was initially some concern about the technical skills necessary for completing the activity, student feedback has been positive.

Students expressed the feeling that "the activity of establishing scenarios featuring characters with a variety of decision points and possible variations of direction to be taken through scenarios presented them with something close to what they imagine professional practice might be like."

I am intrigued by the idea of getting students to create the scenarios themselves. I think in our context working with mature students in the distance education nursing program who might not be technically very strong it might be a good idea to introduce the scenarios as activities to work through before asking them to create their own. I am very interested by the Edinburgh students comments that the creation of the scenarios can approximate real life decision making experiences. This is something we find very difficult to create in the distance education experience with no opportunities for role playing.

I must explore this further.

If you want to read more about this case study go to

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/edinburgh/index_html1