A Comparative Study between Automated and Human Evaluation of Sensory-Motor Skills in Interactive 3D Virtual Environments

The evolution of computational techniques in the field of virtual reality has enabled new ways of discussing and using information technology in educational contexts. Given this scenario, new challenges have emerged and, among them, the need to verify the efficiency of teaching techniques in interactive three-dimensional environments must be highlighted. This work aims to present and compare experimental results on the use of a theoretical evaluation model for sensor motor skills acquisition in an Interactive 3-D Virtual Environment and the results obtained from the evaluation that was carried out by human experts. The experiment involved a task that included needle positioning, insertion, and withdrawal operations in intramuscular injections in the gluteal region. Results indicate that the evaluation of sensory-motor skills is feasible in interactive 3-D virtual environments, showing a higher level of agreement with the human evaluation within the stage of discriminatory evaluation, followed by a relative agreement in evaluating processes of skill degrees distributed from an average point found in the experts´ evaluation and that of an automated method.