Högskolan i Skövde

This report contains a technical description of the result of the S.A.R.E.K (Simulation – Ambulance – Research – Education - Kinship) collaboration project and the Sim2020 project. The projects are collaborations between researchers in healthcare and IT, and prehospital care practitioners, with the aim to design, develop and test a contextualized simulation environment for prehospital care. We built a simulation environment representing the full depth and width of a prehospital care process. Breadth refers to including all phases of a prehospital mission, from dispatch to handover; while depth refers to detailed representations and recreation of artefacts, information and context for each of these phases. This report outlines the details of the overall design, all equipment and practical solutions used to create this.  

Apart from the installation which is described in this report we have also developed methods and carried out a variety of tests and experiments which are reported elsewhere. The focus of this report is the system and its components.

Background

The aim of this paper is to explore how contextualization of a healthcare simulation scenarios impacts immersion, by using a novel objective instrument, the Immersion Score Rating Instrument. This instrument consists of 10 triggers that indicate reduced or enhanced immersion among participants in a simulation scenario. Triggers refer to events such as jumps in time or space (sign of reduced immersion) and natural interaction with the manikin (sign of enhanced immersion) and can be used to calculate an immersion score.

Methods

An experiment using a randomized controlled crossover design was conducted to compare immersion between two simulation training conditions for prehospital care: one basic and one contextualized. The Immersion Score Rating Instrument was used to compare the total immersion score for the whole scenario, the immersion score for individual mission phases, and to analyze differences in trigger occurrences. A paired t test was used to test for significance.

Results

The comparison shows that the overall immersion score for the simulation was higher in the contextualized condition. The average immersion score was 2.17 (sd = 1.67) in the contextualized condition and −0.77 (sd = 2.01) in the basic condition (p < .001). The immersion score was significantly higher in the contextualized condition in five out of six mission phases. Events that might be disruptive for the simulation participants’ immersion, such as interventions of the instructor and illogical jumps in time or space, are present to a higher degree in the basic scenario condition; while events that signal enhanced immersion, such as natural interaction with the manikin, are more frequently observed in the contextualized condition.

ConclusionsThe results suggest that contextualization of simulation training with respect to increased equipment and environmental fidelity as well as functional task alignment might affect immersion positively and thus contribute to an improved training experience.

The purpose of this research was to answer the following central questions: 1) How accurate are human observers at predicting the behavior of cyclists as the cyclists approached a crossing? 2) If the accuracy is reliably better than chance, what cues were used to make the predictions? 3) At what distance from the crossing did the most critical cues occur? 4) Can the cues be used in a model that can reliably predict cyclist intent? We present results that show a number of indicators that can be used in to predict the intention of a cyclist, i.e., future actions of a cyclist, e.g., “left turn” or “continue forward” etc.

Results of empirical studies show that humans are reasonably good at this type of prediction for a majority of the situations studied. However, some situations seem to contain conflicting information. The results also suggested that human prediction of intention is to a large extent relying on a single “strong” indicator, e.g., that the cyclist makes a clear “head movement”. Several “weaker" indicators that together could be a strong “combined indicator”, or equivalently strong evidence, is likely to be missed or too complex to be handled by humans in real-time. We suggest this line of research can be used to create decision support systems that predict the behavior of cyclists in traffic.

The research presented in this paper examines how collaborative learning manifests in different environments of emergent play. Emergent games are interesting objects of study from a serious games perspective as their non-linear and open-endednature canalleviate issues caused by impersonal and inflexible content. But, in order for them to be useful in learning contexts, methods for assessment of player actions and participation in emergent games need to be improved. Our approach to this issue was to device a methodology to track individual group members’ work contributions during different types of group exercises. Groups of middle-school children, ages 6-9,were tasked to build structures out of LEGOs and in the game Minecraft and, through the devised tracking method, data from the different exercises were compared in order to determine how the collaborative patterns within the groups varied depending on what type of exercise they were performing. The results of the study indicate that the computer based emergent system was experienced as more engaging and immersive than the face-to-face one, and that it fostered continuous discovery, experimentation and problem solving throughout the game session.The devised methodology resulted in some good indicators regarding collaborative behavior, but more parameters need to be added for it to be usable for effective and meaningful player assessments.

Training actors from public safety agencies (PSA), e.g. emergency medical services, fire departments, police departments involves different technologies and communication and collaboration activities. New technologies promise better support, not only for training, but also for logging relevant information for future analysis and learning. However, choosing the right technologies, defining proper set-ups for the training activities, and identifying premises for long-term use of technical facilities is both difficult and time consuming. Applying earlier lessons from evaluating work in Virtual Environments (VEs) [1], our aim is to develop a better understanding of the impact of new technologies by identifying collaboration patterns influencing training. Collaboration is examined via social, technical, and task related interaction, distinguishable in the different phases of training, from starting an alarm to ending the emergency activities. Our main results illustrate the benefits of (1) building scenarios, and training whole activity chains for certain rescue or other emergency activities, (2) using simulations for better understanding physical places, the task, and (3) distinguishing technical, social and task focused characteristics for factors influencing emergency focused collaboration. Moreover, the results also contribute to understanding the benefits of considering specific simulation technologies when training for emergency and rescue activities.

This paper reports the feasibility of Elinor, a game-based system for stroke rehabilitation in the home. The Elinor prototype has been positively evaluated with respect to its usability, user acceptance and motivational factors as well as its rehabilitation effect. This paper reports the findings from the whole project. To summarize the results, we find that game factors can be used to enhance motivation for rehabilitation. We had positive results with respect to many of the rehabilitation measurements employed. For example, the assessment of motor and process skills was positive as were also the self-reported improvements in daily activities. Furthermore, it seems that an increased self-efficacy with respect to the belief that the treatment can have an effect is positive and expected to increase motivation to undergo necessary rehabilitation. The usability and perceived usefulness of the system were also positively evaluated and the subjects expressed a positive attitude towards the system as well as a belief in its usefulness. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.