Communication and Knowledge Sharing in an Immersive Learning Game

Learning games are becoming a serious contender to real-life simulations for professional training, particularly in highly technical jobs where their cost-effectiveness is a sizeable asset. The most appreciated feature of a learning game is to provide in an automatic way to each learner an integrated feedback in real time during the game and, ideally, a personally meaningful debriefing at the end of each session. Immersive learning games use virtual reality and 3D environments to allow several learners at once to collaborate in the most natural way. Managing the communication on the other hand has proven so far a more difficult problem to overcome. In this article, we present a communication system designed to be used in immersive learning games. This innovative system is neither based on voice-chat nor branching dialogues but on the idea that pieces of information can be manipulated as tangible objects in a virtual environment. This system endeavours to offer the simplest and most intuitive way for several learners to acquire and share knowledge in an immersive virtual environment while complying with the requirements of a reliable assessment of their performance. A first experiment with nurse anaesthetist students gives evidence that this simple communication system is apt to support lifelike behaviours such as consultation, debate, conflict or irritation.