University of Illinois Global Campus entry point
Do SL public health training
applications really work?
US$1.6m to find the answer
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health have secured a grant of US$1.6 million to fund a study to determine if collaborative virtual environments designed to improve public health preparedness and response planning really work.
The school which is relying more and more on virtual environments for training and education has received the grant from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The results should be of interest to health educators worldwide given the number of Second Life health applications, including New Zealand’s own midwifery pilot study under the auspices of the SLENZ Project and Auckland University’s Second Life and ONGENS medical centres.
Under the programme, according to Virtual World News, UIC researchers will recruit 40 local health departments from across the United States to take part in the study.
Half the participants will use Second Life to train public health workers in emergency preparedness while the other half will use a traditional meeting approach to planning.
The study’s principal investigator Colleen Monahan, director of the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education at the UIC School of Public Health, said, “We believe that using virtual environments will improve collaboration across agencies and jurisdictions, raise awareness about planning for vulnerable populations, increase the realism in the training exercise, allow participants to participate in different scenarios, and allow emergency responders to return to the training exercise at their convenience for ongoing training.”
Filed under: Education, Education in Second Life, Education in virtual worlds, ONGENS, SLENZ Project, Virtual Worlds | Tagged: Midwifery Pilot, Ongens, Otago Polytech, Second Life, SLENZ Project, University of Auckland, University of Illinois, US Centre for Disease Control andPrevention, Virtual World News |
Tripping the Virtual Fantastic 
So if Colleen believes all that already – why research? Or is the research biased? 40 Local health departments.. Is it study or recruitment and training to make what she believes, true?
The research is being done for the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, taking a much wider look than just at the UIC’s current programme.
The research will not necessarily make what she believes true. In fact, it could just as easily disprove her beliefs, although I realise there is a “cadre” of academics who believe that all research should be undertaken without preconceived ideas.
To my mind a researcher must have a target/belief of some sort, or there is no point tof doing the research,but that is a subject more suited to philosophy than this blog.