Design and Evaluation of Intelligent Virtual Patients for Simulation-Based Pharmacy Education Through Human-Centered Conversation Modeling

• In Event: Design Cases in Diverse Learning Contexts

Abstract

Virtual patients (VPs) with interactive conversational abilities are essential to create a fully immersive learning simulation in healthcare. In this paper, we discussed a case of the formative evaluation process of VP design in which VPs are continuously refined through the expert review, Human-centered distributed Conversation Modeling (HCM), and performance data analysis. HCM was employed as an innovative and integral approach to overcome limitations of the traditional Centralized Conversational Modeling (CCM). We explained each phase of the design and evaluation process using three selected VPs created for the over-the-counter (OTC) learning simulation for pharmacy undergraduate students. We further discussed how our continuous formative evaluation, reflection, and new efforts have improved the design of intelligent VPs.

Authors

• Joshua Jackson, University of South Florida

• Sanghoon Park, University of South Florida