Virtual Reality Medical Education in Second Life

Increasing numbers of people are using thefor individuals with Asperger's Syndrome, and
Internet for the provision of all sorts of healthmodeling the effects of tsunami on coastal towns.
services, from prescribing, through consulting toThe system has over 10 million account holders
setting up automated self-treatment programs.from all over the world, most of them with free
But what about using it for education andbasic accounts. Approximately 800,000 of those
therapy? After all, in theory, the ultimate form ofusers are active, with over 80,000 of them
cognitive behavioral therapy should be "virtualconnected to the system at any time. Virtual
reality therapy." By simply wearing yourreality programs such as Second Life are
wrap-around sound and vision multimedia headsetincreasingly being used for educational purposes in
you can be instantly transported to a cliff edge,a variety of fields, including medical training and
soar in a plane thousands of feet above thedisaster preparedness. Linden Lab currently
ground or be surrounded by a gathering ofoperates the Second Life Education Wiki which
thousands of spiders - depending on your phobia.functions as a source of information for
And the ultimate form of online education shouldeducators and trainers in a variety of fields who
be fully interactive, case based and studentwish to use Second Life for distance learning or
driven, all of which I now use in my teaching inlarge-scale training purposes. A number of
Second Life.government agencies, including the Department of
The phrase "virtual reality" was coined by JaronHomeland Security, the Centers for Disease
Lanier in 1989 to describe computer simulations ofControl, the National Institutes of Health, and the
physical environments. Since the mid-1990s, theNational Science Foundation, have begun using
video game industry and 3D graphics cardSecond Life to hold meetings, conduct training
manufacturers have driven forward the state ofsessions, and explore ways to make access to
personal computer graphics, advancing it farinformation more readily available around the
beyond the needs of most business users. Theseworld. A recent comprehensive survey intended
systems range in capability from simple displaysto gather information on the activities, attitudes,
of 3D objects to entire virtual cities. Virtual realityand interests of educators active in Second Life
systems are now being routinely implemented onconducted by New Media Consortium reported
personal computers for a variety of activities.that the majority used it for educational purposes
One of the most popular virtual reality programssuch as teaching and taking classes as well as for
is Second Life, produced by Linden Lab, Inc.faculty training and development.
Second Life is a general-purpose virtual worldI have been using Second Life as a teaching and
accessible through any Internet-connectedlearning environment for several years now. With
personal computer. In order to interact in Secondcolleagues I have created a "virtual hallucinations"
Life, users create "avatars", or animatedenvironment, which demonstrates the lived
characters, to represent themselves. Individualsexperience of psychosis and allows participants
use these avatars to maneuver through variouswho travel through the environment to
"worlds", complete with buildings, geographicalexperience both visual and auditory hallucinations;
features, and other avatars. While the systemvisions and voices. We used this environment to
borrows heavily from video game technology, it isteach this experience to our medical and
not a game - there are no points, no levels, nopsychology students. With the California
missions, and nothing to win. It is simply aDepartment of Health and other colleagues I have
platform by which people can create virtualcreated a virtual bioterrorism crisis clinic to train
communities, model geological, meteorological, orhealth workers, and more recently, as part of our
behavioral phenomena, or rehearse events. I haveHealth Informatics Certificate Program, with
been working in Second Life for several yearsUniversity of California Davis Extension, we have
now.taught informatics students in a virtual conference
Users of Second Life include a variety ofcenter on our own private island; Davis Island.
education organizations, from Harvard Law SchoolStudents find the environment straightforward to
to the American Cancer Society. There arelearn to navigate, and within a week of our
currently areas of the virtual world that provideinformatics students being introduced to the
such disparate services as teaching heart soundsenvironment they were able to travel and tour
and auscultation technique, providing social supportaround Second Life with the rest of us with ease.