The results of an Authoring Tools for Immersive Training survey
have been released by Daden Limited (Daden).
The survey indicated that educators want to be able to easily
create 3D training exercises themselves without needing the help of
technologists nor expert knowledge of how to build the "sets" in
their chosen virtual world. The survey asked questions about
current uses of immersive worlds for learning, experiences of
PIVOTE (Daden's existing system) and users' requirements for the
future development of authoring tools.
Nearly 47% of the respondents were from education, 15% from the
health professional training sector and interestingly 19% were from
the corporate sector - especially as there's little sign of a
significant uptake of immersive training in that area. Second Life,
OpenSim and Unity were the top three platforms and Second Life,
despite the removal of the educational discount, dominates still
with 39% respondents using it.
Of those using immersive worlds for learning, 44% were using
them at least monthly with about 17% regularly using them on a
daily or weekly basis and over 58% on a quarterly basis.
Encouragingly most sessions were between half an hour and two hours
- matching typical lesson durations. This all suggests that tutors
are really using them, not just dabbling or doing
proofs-of-concept.
Existing PIVOTE users generally valued the product and thought
it was heading in the right direction and liked the "ability to
create learning exercises with little scripting". Top of
respondent's wish list for improvements to PIVOTE included making
it even easier to use, improved user interfaces, and smoother
incorporation of media. Daden are currently developing a Second
Generation Immersive Learning Authoring Tool, known as OPAL. The
requirements for the future section of the survey was to gauge
opinions on functionality and features for this.
The top four functions rated as "vital" importance for an
authoring tool for virtual worlds were the ability to "set up
rules/logic for actions" (48%), "allow multiple choice questions"
(40%), "can choose from a library of objects for an exercise" (39%)
and be "object orientated" (select an object to set a behaviour)
(38%) - all of which will be available in OPAL. Users felt it was
also vital, in terms of "deploy and play functions" that the
authoring tool has the flexibility to support multiple virtual
worlds and that exercises can be played and tested in 2D on the
web. PIVOTE already has this, and OPAL will further improve on this
functionality.
The ability to log all student/group actions was rated the most
important reporting and integration feature of an authoring tool.
Being able to pass student results back to Virtual Learning
Environments (VLE's) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) were
also high on the agenda. Both features will be present in the first
release of OPAL.
David Burden, Daden's Managing Director says "We hope that OPAL
will give educators and trainers working in immersive environments
(and those new to such environments) a powerful tool with which to
create immersive experiences in a cost-effective way."
The survey results confirmed that OPAL will address most if not
all the requirements expressed by the respondents in its first
release - planned for March 2012. Users want a good, easy to use
and flexible authoring tool for the standard delivery of immersive
learning exercises to PC's on their chosen platform.