Online Simulations and Serious Games

Online simulations and serious games have been developed within the Faculty since 2003 to support situated learning and teaching.

This work is led by staff within the Online Simulation and Immersive Education Research and Development Group (OSIME RDG), a multi-disciplinary team that combines learning design, pedagogy, research, 3D design and user interface and back end software engineering skills, all co-located at our City South Campus.

By combining these skills within one team we are able to help stimulate a culture of creativity among staff and students and provide an agile response to the ideas they generate leading to bespoke and scalable learning solutions that enrich the learning and teaching experience the Faculty provides. 

Virtual Case Creator

To facilitate sim development we have developed specialist software known as Virtual Case Creator (VCC). This has led to online simulations being integrated within a wide range of health and social care learning programmes at the University and other FE, HE and health care organisations within the UK and Europe.

Online simulations augment more traditional teaching methods by providing flexible, context rich, authentic and learner centred skills development opportunities. They help learners to develop their observation, analytic, diagnostic, problem-solving and decision-making skills.

To support this our most recent simulation platform uses a range of reward and recognition features drawn from the field of game based learning to promote learner engagement. The platform also provides analytics for teachers, trainers and students that reflect learner engagement, progression and knowledge and skills gain.

There are currently two versions of VCC software, 2.6 and 3.0 and these have been used to create over 30 simulations. 2.6 sims supported over 16,000 submissions during 2014/15. All 2.6 simulations are currently being migrated to our most recent software version, 3.0.