Narrative and Behavioral Engagement as Indicators for the Effectiveness of Intentionally Designed Virtual Simulations of Interpersonal Interactions.

Interventions involving simulated interactions aimed at mimicking real situations must be engaging to maximize their effectiveness. This study aimed to assess how a sample of middle school girls displayed behavioral and cognitive indicators of engagement when interacting with avatars representing game characters that were controlled by a human digital puppeteer. The simulation game, DRAMA-RAMA, is a component of an intervention intended to reduce at-risk girls' sexual and other risky behaviors. We used verbal/nonverbal behaviors and surveys to assess the game players' cognitive and behavioral involvement (N = 131). Participants perceived the game scenarios and interactions as realistic and the characters as similar to people in real life. Participants' behavior indicated their involvement and interest in interacting with the game characters. Finally, participants tended to be appropriate but not effective when attempting to advise/support the characters. These findings have implications for assessing successful operationalization of communication designs in interactive virtual learning environments.

Multi-Level Linguistic Alignment in a Dynamic Collaborative Problem-Solving Task.

Cocreating meaning in collaboration is challenging. Success is often determined by people's abilities to coordinate their language to converge upon shared mental representations. Here we explore one set of low-level linguistic behaviors, linguistic alignment, that both emerges from, and facilitates, outcomes of high-level convergence. Linguistic alignment captures the ways people reuse, that is, "align to," the lexical, syntactic, and semantic forms of others' utterances. Our focus is on the temporal change of multi-level linguistic alignment, as well as how alignment is related to communicative outcomes within a unique collaborative problem-solving paradigm. The primary task, situated within a virtual educational video game, requires creative thinking between three people where the paths for possible solutions are highly variable. We find that over time interactions are marked by decreasing lexical and syntactic alignment, with a trade-off of increasing semantic alignment. However, greater semantic alignment does not translate into better team performance. Overall, these findings provide greater clarity on the role of linguistic coordination within complex and dynamic collaborative problem-solving tasks.

A blended model of interior design studio practice due to COVID-19.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic upended the educational system around the globe. During this challenging period, universities and colleges looked for other effective alternative methods of learning, such as Virtual Learning Environments (VL). Besides, Ahlia University has implemented E-learning in response to COVID-19. There needs to be more attention given to the challenges associated with technology adoption facing interior design and architecture programs, where over 60% of courses are practical, especially design studios, which form the core of the curriculum. According to a review of the relevant literature, there needs to be more research on blended learning in interior design and architecture. In order to enhance the teaching and learning of interior design and architecture, further research is required to combine cutting-edge techniques and technology. The aim of this study was to review the classroom materials for Ahlia University's interior design studio. Methods: After completing the INTD 212, INTD 216, INTD 311, and INTD 404 studios in mid-March 2022, a short Qualtrics poll was done to assess the difficulties of e-learning and offer potential consequences. Results: Though students were conveniently attending courses online, there was not much discussion and interaction like in the face-to-face model. Blended teaching in design studio courses offered many benefits. The results showed that blended design studios achieved pedagogical results as students developed their knowledge. Conclusions: Based on the findings, this research concludes that teaching and learning should be shifted from face-to-face and online learning to the best practice of a blended format.

ANN-LSTM: A deep learning model for early student performance prediction in MOOC.

Learning Analytics aims to discover the class of students' performance over time. This helps instructors make in-time interventions but, discovering the students' performance class in virtual learning environments consider a challenge due to distance constraints. Many studies, which applied to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) datasets, built predictive models but, these models were applied to specific courses and students and classify students into binary classes. Moreover, their results were obtained at the end of the course period thus delaying making in-time interventions. To bridge this gap, this study proposes a day-wise multi-class model to predict students' performance using Artificial Neural Network and Long Short-Term Memory, named ANN-LSTM. To check the validity of this model, two baseline models, the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), were conducted and compared with ANN-LSTM in this context. Additionally, the results of ANN-LSTM were compared with the state-of-the-art models in terms of accuracy. The results show that the ANN-LSTM model obtained the best results among baseline models. The accuracy obtained by ANN-LSTM was about 70% at the end of the third month of the course and outperforms RNN and GRU models which obtained 53% and 57%, respectively. Also, the ANN-LSTM model obtained the best accuracy results with enhancement rates of about 6-14% when compared with state-of-the-art models. This highlights the ability of LSTM as a time series model to make early predictions for student performance in MOOC taking benefit of its architecture and ability to keep latent dependencies.

Gender-sensitive sentiment analysis for estimating the emotional climate in online teacher education.

Teacher training takes place in distance education to a large extent. Within these contexts, trainers should make use of all the information available to adapt and refine their instructional methods during the training process. Sentiment analysis (SA) can give immediate feedback of the emotions expressed and help in the training process, although it has been used infrequently in educational settings, slow to assess, and bound to interpretative issues, such as gender bias. This research aimed to design and evaluate a SA gender-sensitive method as a proxy to characterize the emotional climate of teacher trainees in an online course. An explanatory case study with mixed methods was implemented among students of the Interuniversity Master of Educational Technologies (N = 48). Participants' messages were analyzed and correlated with learning achievement and, along with a qualitative study of participants' satisfaction with the Master's degree, to validate the effectiveness of the method. Results show that sentiment expression cannot be used to exactly predict participants' achievement, but it can guide trainers to foresee how participants will broadly act in a learning task and, in consequence, use SA results for tuning and improving the quality of the guidance during the course. Gender differences found in our study support gendered patterns related to the emotional climate, with female participants posting more negative messages than their counterparts. Last but not least, the design of well-adjusted teaching-learning sequences with appropriate scaffolding can contribute to building a positive climate in the online learning environment.

Diseño de entorno virtual en la asignatura Sistema Nervioso, Endocrino y Reproductor, como apoyo al proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje / Design of virtual environment in the subject Nervous, Endocrine and Reproductive System as support to the teaching-learning process

RESUMEN Introducción: la utilización del entorno virtual de aprendizaje en la asignatura Sistema Nervioso, Endocrino y Reproductor, por parte de los estudiantes de primer año de la carrera de Medicina, constituye una meta a lograr en el contexto cubano. Esto requiere de tareas que permitan modular el manejo de los entornos virtuales de aprendizaje al perfeccionamiento de las asignaturas presenciales. Objetivo: diseñar un entorno virtual como espacio de aprendizaje en la asignatura Sistema Nervioso, Endocrino y Reproductor. Materiales y métodos : se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo transversal. La población estuvo constituida por 285 estudiantes. Se le aplicó la encuesta a una muestra de 165 estudiantes, para un nivel de confianza del 95 % y un margen de error del 5. Los individuos se escogieron a través del método de muestreo probabilístico aleatorio simple. Resultados: de modo general, se observó un alto grado de satisfacción en todos los indicadores, destacándose el 3, el 7 y el 9. Conclusiones: el entorno virtual descrito constituye un espacio de aprendizaje importante para los estudiantes -como soporte al proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje-, valorado con alto grado de satisfacción por los participantes.

ABSTRACT Introduction: the use of a virtual learning environment in the subject Nervous, Endocrine and Reproductive System by first-year students of Medicine, is a goal to be achieved in the Cuban context. This requires tasks which will allow modulating the management of virtual learning environments to the classroom subjects' improvement. Objective: to design a virtual environment as learning space in the subject Nervous, Endocrine and Reproductive System. Materials and methods: a cross-sectional, descriptive, observational study was performed. The population was constituted by 285 students. The survey was applied to a sample of 165 students, for a confidence level of 95 % and an error margin of 5. Individuals were chosen through simple random probabilistic sampling. Results: in general, a high degree of satisfaction was found in all indicators, standing out indicators 3, 7 and 9. Conclusions: the described virtual environment is an important learning space for students-as support to the teaching learning process-, valued with high satisfaction degree by the participants.

La virtualización de la superación profesional para el mejoramiento del desempeño pedagógico durante la COVID-19 / Virtualization of professional upgrading for improving teaching performance during COVID-19

Introducción: La pandemia generada por la COVID-19 promovió que la superación profesional adquiriera nuevos matices. Las universidades fomentaron el uso de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones, y el aprendizaje en los entornos virtuales. Objetivo: Exponer criterios sobre la virtualización de la superación profesional para el mejoramiento del desempeño pedagógico durante la COVID-19. Posicionamiento del autor: La situación generada por la COVID-19 exigió realizar el proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje en los entornos virtuales, por esta razón los profesores del Departamento de Ciencias Sociales asumieron este reto sin preparación previa. La superación profesional realizada en el Aula Virtual constituyó una vía eficaz para la aplicación de los recursos educativos virtuales. Conclusiones: La superación profesional en circunstancias sanitarias de emergencia se realizó en el Aula Virtual de la Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, donde se logró el mejoramiento del desempeño pedagógico de los docentes del Departamento de Ciencias Sociales(AU)

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic caused professional upgrading to acquire new shades. Universities encouraged the use of information and communication technologies, as well as learning in virtual settings. Objective: To present criteria on the virtualization of professional upgrading for the improvement of pedagogical performance during COVID-19. Author's stance: The situation caused by COVID-19 demanded to carry out the teaching-learning process in virtual settings; therefore, the professors from the social sciences area took up this challenge without previous preparation. The professional upgrading process carried out in the virtual classroom proved to be an effective way for the application of virtual educational resources. Conclusions: Professional upgrading during public health circumstances of emergency was carried out in the virtual classroom of the Latin American School of Medicine, where pedagogical performance could be improved among the professors from the social sciences area(AU)

A Data-Driven Approach to Quantify and Measure Students' Engagement in Synchronous Virtual Learning Environments.

In face-to-face learning environments, instructors (sub)consciously measure student engagement to obtain immediate feedback regarding the training they are leading. This constant monitoring process enables instructors to dynamically adapt the training activities according to the perceived student reactions, which aims to keep them engaged in the learning process. However, when shifting from face-to-face to synchronous virtual learning environments (VLEs), assessing to what extent students are engaged to the training process during the lecture has become a challenging and arduous task. Typical indicators such as students' faces, gestural poses, or even hearing their voice can be easily masked by the intrinsic nature of the virtual domain (e.g., cameras and microphones can be turned off). The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology and its associated model to measure student engagement in VLEs that can be obtained from the systematic analysis of more than 30 types of digital interactions and events during a synchronous lesson. To validate the feasibility of this approach, a software prototype has been implemented to measure student engagement in two different learning activities in a synchronous learning session: a masterclass and a hands-on session. The obtained results aim to help those instructors who feel that the connection with their students has weakened due to the virtuality of the learning environment.

Conceptual Integration and Empirical Validation of a Unified Taxonomy: Quantitative Data Analysis for Virtual Learning Environments.

Specific classes of cyberspaces emphasize different types of digital transactions given the user's context, thus making it essential to take into account what these environments can afford. In this way, we can portray the niches of technological use as ecologies of particular possibilities and compare how they differ between distinct spheres of human life. The present research is focused on describing the conceptual integration of a taxonomic crossover between Virtual Learning Environments and Educational Affordances of Technology, while also performing empirical testing and determining the psychometric properties in a scale regarding the aforementioned taxonomy. The study sample consisted of 320 students in the departments of foreign languages from three different universities in Sonora (northwestern region of Mexico). Students were given a questionnaire of 21 items organized into four subscales with a Likert-type response option to measure the notions concerning their usage of Virtual Learning Environments. Internal consistency procedures and confirmatory factor analysis by means of Cronbach's alpha and Structural modeling support the derived factorial structure, which contains Cyber-Communications, Virtual Behavior Settings, Virtual Communities, and Availability and Access to Connectivity. This structure traces the environmental properties perceived by learners in a virtual environment. Results sustain the initial conceptual construction regarding the proposed taxonomy, conclude that the 'Virtual Learning Environments Questionnaire' demonstrates adequate psychometric properties, and validate it as a fitting measure to assess the perceived psychological experience of students in a digital educational setting.

Enfoque axiológico en la Educación Superior mediante la interacción de los estudiantes en el Entorno Virtual de Aprendizaje / Axiological approach in Higher Education through the interaction of students in the Virtual Learning Environment

Resumen: El presente artículo se circunscribe en el marco de la educación superior, analizando el entorno virtual de aprendizaje en la plataforma Moodle de la Universidad Técnica de Machala como primer centro universitario de la Provincia de El Oro, la cual se encuentra inmersa dentro de este proceso sistémico que es el avance tecnológico y también social. La metodología utilizada se enmarca en un enfoque mixto (cuantitativo-cualitativo) para lo cual se aplicó como técnica de recolección de datos un cuestionario en línea a un número de población de doscientos estudiantes de trece carreras de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales del periodo académico 2019-2. El estudio evidencia que los estudiantes se han acoplado al uso de los recursos y actividades del Entorno Virtual de Aprendizaje basado en la plataforma Moodle como parte de su formación académica. Sin embargo, muchos estudiantes no interactúan correctamente respetando las normas de la virtualidad puesto que aún existe una ausencia de controles que no proporcionan autenticidad del usuario mediante el soporte de cámaras, la presentación tardía de tareas y evaluaciones que suelen ser propensas a la divulgación de los cuestionarios por medio de las redes sociales y dispositivos móviles. Aunque existan una serie de parámetros y rubricas para las calificaciones, se denota una pérdida de valores personales. El tema de la axiología en la educación resulta ser interesante, los docentes se encuentran interesados en identificar los aspectos a mejorar ante el comportamiento de los estudiantes frente al aprendizaje virtual, pues la tarea de la Universidad Técnica de Machala es formar en valores a los futuros profesionales en el Modelo Educativo Integrador Desarrollador adoptado desde el año 2016.

ABSTRACT: This article is circumscribed within the framework of higher education, analyzing the virtual learning environment in the Moodle platform of the Technical University of Machala as the first university center in the Province of El Oro, which is immersed within this systemic process which is technological and social advancement. The methodology used is part of a mixed approach (quantitative-qualitative) for which an online questionnaire was applied as a data collection technique to a population of two hundred students from thirteen careers of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the academic period 2019-2. The study shows that students conveniently use the resources and activities of the Virtual Learning Environment based on the Moodle platform as part of their academic training. However, many students do not interact correctly respecting the rules of virtuality since there is still an absence of controls that do not provide user authenticity through the support of cameras, late submission of assignments and assessments that are often prone to disclosure of the questionnaires through social networks and mobile devices. Although there are a series of parameters and rubrics for the qualifications, a loss of personal values ​​is denoted. The topic of axiology in education turns out to be interesting, teachers are interested in identifying the aspects to improve before the behavior of students in the face of virtual learning, since the task of the Technical University of Machala is to train in values ​​in the future professionals in the Developer Integrative Educational Model adopted since 2016.

A software architecture perspective about Moodle flexibility for supporting empirical research of teaching theories.

Moodle represents a great contribution to the educational world since it provides an evolving platform for Virtual Learning Management Systems (VLMS) that became a standard de facto for most of the educational institutions around the world. Through the pedagogical functions provided, it collects in the many globally spread out databases a huge amount of information regarding the activities that teachers and students perform during the learning process. This reality makes Moodle a natural choice for conducting experimental research by Artificial Intelligence researchers interested in theories for improving learning and teaching; particularly those related with the controversial learning styles concept. Roughly defined, a learning style intends to be a model of the way and media an apprentice acquires knowledge and hence the way a teacher should present that knowledge to the apprentice matching his/her learning style. Independently of the many controversies (be these scientific, psychological or even ethical) about the soundness and real outcomes that such ideas can bring to improve learning, it's a worthy intriguing research area for many researchers pursuing the ideal automated teacher: the teachbot dream. Behind this goal we have developed Middle, a Moodle plug-in able to infer the learning style of each student taking a course using an advanced version of a Bayesian network model that we previously tested. Middle intends support personalized teaching based on the Felder-Silverman's ILS model and has been evaluated through controlled experiments and pilot test in high schools and university courses. Such experiments showed promising results that shed some light on learning styles modeling and its potential outcomes. During the experience we found strong limitations in the Moodle design regarding its supposed flexibility to incorporate new functionalities. From a strict software architecture point of view, we found that such flexibility is far from being enough to easier the implementation of the dynamic computational behavior required to support a teachbot. This made our effort much harder than expected, perhaps because of the illusion induced by the widespread use of Moodle. In this article we present our results and experiences extending Moddle with intelligent behavior from a software architecture point of view, focusing on the lessons learnt in such extension. Our experience indicates that this simplicity is far from being so and hence it is worth to share the limitations and how we overcome them.

Alexa, What classes do I have today? The use of Artificial Intelligence via Smart Speakers in Education.

Looking back to the rumours from the early 2000's, when the world of technology bloomed together with the curiosity towards what was next to come, by 2020, robots should have assisted and supported almost every task from our daily life. While this may seem as a Sci-Fi movie scenario, it is partially a tangible reality, that we quickly got used to, thanks to the introduction of smart speakers. As the world changes, so does the future of our students. In this respects, the evolution of the technology comes up with specific environments for educational purpose. Building smart learning environments supported by e-learning platforms is an important area of research in education domain within our days. The evolution of these smart learning environments is justified by some events (Covid19) that force students to learn remotely. The paper proposes a software application component using Alexa smart speaker, that integrates different services (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Services) for a proper virtual environment platform, for both students and teachers. It addresses the main concerns of the current educational system, and provides a smart solution through the use of Artificial Intelligence based tools. The proposed approach not only achieves unifying data and knowledge-share mechanisms in a remotely mode, but it brings also a good learning experience, increasing the effectiveness and the efficiency of the learning process.

Examining the Technological Pedagogical Content Characteristics of Games for Medical Education.

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) such as games can greatly enhance medical education curriculum. In this monograph, we argue for the importance of identifying existing VLEs and analyzing their characteristics in order for medical educators to establish alignment with their curricular goals. We introduce the co-opted technological pedagogical content knowledge framework as an analytical lens for examining the context-attuned design features of games [1]. We apply the lens to study three games designed to advance medical education; namely, CD4 Hunter, Septris, and Microbe Invader. We conclude with implications for enhancing medical education curricula through the incorporation of digital games.

Entornos virtuales de aprendizaje en ciencias de la salud / Virtual learning environments in health sciences

La actualidad está marcada por el desarrollo cada vez más vertiginoso de la tecnología. Este hecho incide necesariamente en el proceso formativo de nuestros estudiantes Los EVA (entornos virtuales del aprendizaje) son herramientas para facilitar la transmisión del conocimiento mediado por la informática.

Tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en educación universitaria / Information and communication technologies in university education

El uso de las nuevas tecnologías en la enseñanza universitaria no consiste solo en emplear dispositivos o softwares, sino que involucra cambios en por lo menos tres ejes: nuevas relaciones con el conocimiento, la transformación de la didáctica y la posibilidad de contribuir como nunca antes a la igualdad educativa. Asimismo, los entornos virtuales son potentes espacios educativos, tanto en la educación a distancia como en la presencial (AU)

The use of new technologies in university education not only consists of using devices or software, but involves changes in at least three axes: new relationships with knowledge, the transformation of pedagogical approaches and the possibility of contributing as never before to educational equality. Also, virtual environments are powerful educational spaces, both in online and face to face education (AU)

Social learning in large online audiences of health professionals: Improving dialogue with automated tools.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) bring about the opportunity to reach large international audiences of health professionals. However, change in clinical practice eventually needs social interaction, to validate the new knowledge with trusted peers, in the agreement and adoption phases of change. How can meaningful dialogue take place without scaling up expert tutoring? The extensive experience from social network applications such as Facebook or Twitter provides an opportunity to improve dialogue among peers and with experts automatically and seamlessly, as part of what is called social learning analytics (SLA). Large amounts of data about prior relationships among participants in a course - similar to Facebook and other social applications-, among participants and course materials - similar to Netflix or Amazon -, as well as natural language processing, could be obtained, and then analyzed and used to improve the educational processes and outcomes. In this paper, a series of examples with pilot uses of SLA in the context of massive online courses for physicians and other health care professionals are described. They include: 1) Forecasting of academic accomplishment. 2) Team-based face-to-face learning as part of massive online courses. 3) Analysis of existing connections, to ensure the most connected discussion groups of course participants. 4) Facebook-like dialogue with other course participants who are previously related, as well as with the Course Faculty. 5) Crowdsourcing and friendsourcing, for recommending useful study materials or future courses. 6) Natural language processing, to classify posts in online discussions. It should be noted that the article does not address the use of Facebook or Twitter in continuing medical education (CME), but instead, the use of their approaches in CME. The intent of this manuscript is to create awareness in the medical education community that this type of analysis is possible and potentially useful, to receive feedback on the possible functionalities as well as critique these developments, and to create a space for collaboration in research and innovation projects with other interested parties.

Competencias docentes en entornos virtuales: un reto para la anestesiología cubana / Teaching competences in virtual environments: A challenge for cuban anesthesiology

Introducción: La educación virtual es el proceso de formación desarrollado mediante la incorporación de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones, a través de internet. Para un adecuado desarrollo de este nuevo método pedagógico se necesitan profesores preparados y motivados en ese sentido. Objetivos: Describir los principales aspectos relacionados con el desarrollo de las competencias docentes en los entornos virtuales de aprendizaje. Método: Se realizó un resumen de la información extraída de diferentes fuentes bibliográficas. Desarrollo: El nivel de competencias docentes en los entornos virtuales de aprendizaje se ve afectado por el escaso conocimiento y dominio de las herramientas tecnológicas y la poca motivación. Conclusiones: La presente revisión aporta elementos para trazar una estrategia destinada a mantener una superación profesoral continua en la que se incluya el uso de las de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones(AU)

Introduction: Virtual education is the training process developed through the usage of information and communication technologies, through the Internet. For an adequate development of this new pedagogical method, teachers are needed who are qualified and motivated in that respect. Objectives: To describe the main aspects related to the development of teaching competences in virtual learning environments. Method: A summary was made of the information extracted from different bibliographic sources. Development: The level of teaching competences in virtual learning environments is affected by poor knowledge and mastery of technological tools, as well as by low motivation. Conclusions: This review provides elements to design a strategy aimed at maintaining the continuous improvement of professors including the use of information communication technologies(AU)

Virtual Laparoscopic Training System Based on VCH Model.

Laparoscopy has been widely used to perform abdominal surgeries, as it is advantageous in that the patients experience lower post-surgical trauma, shorter convalescence, and less pain as compared to traditional surgery. Laparoscopic surgeries require precision; therefore, it is imperative to train surgeons to reduce the risk of operation. Laparoscopic simulators offer a highly realistic surgical environment by using virtual reality technology, and it can improve the training efficiency of laparoscopic surgery. This paper presents a virtual Laparoscopic surgery system. The proposed system utilizes the Visible Chinese Human (VCH) to construct the virtual models and simulates real-time deformation with both improved special mass-spring model and morph target animation. Meanwhile, an external device that integrates two five-degrees-of-freedom (5-DOF) manipulators was designed and made to interact with the virtual system. In addition, the proposed system provides a modular tool based on Unity3D to define the functions and features of instruments and organs, which could help users to build surgical training scenarios quickly. The proposed virtual laparoscopic training system offers two kinds of training mode, skills training and surgery training. In the skills training mode, the surgeons are mainly trained for basic operations, such as laparoscopic camera, needle, grasp, electric coagulation, and suturing. In the surgery-training mode, the surgeons can practice cholecystectomy and removal of hepatic cysts by guided or non-guided teaching.

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training by Avatars: A Qualitative Study of Medical Students' Experiences Using a Multiplayer Virtual World.

BACKGROUND: Emergency medical practices are often team efforts. Training for various tasks and collaborations may be carried out in virtual environments. Although promising results exist from studies of serious games, little is known about the subjective reactions of learners when using multiplayer virtual world (MVW) training in medicine. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to reach a better understanding of the learners' reactions and experiences when using an MVW for team training of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). METHODS: Twelve Swedish medical students participated in semistructured focus group discussions after CPR training in an MVW with partially preset options. The students' perceptions and feelings related to use of this educational tool were investigated. Using qualitative methodology, discussions were analyzed by a phenomenological data-driven approach. Quality measures included negotiations, back-and-forth reading, triangulation, and validation with the informants. RESULTS: Four categories characterizing the students' experiences could be defined: (1) Focused Mental Training, (2) Interface Diverting Focus From Training, (3) Benefits of Practicing in a Group, and (4) Easy Loss of Focus When Passive. We interpreted the results, compared them to findings of others, and propose advantages and risks of using virtual worlds for learning. CONCLUSIONS: Beneficial aspects of learning CPR in a virtual world were confirmed. To achieve high participant engagement and create good conditions for training, well-established procedures should be practiced. Furthermore, students should be kept in an active mode and frequent feedback should be utilized. It cannot be completely ruled out that the use of virtual training may contribute to erroneous self-beliefs that can affect later clinical performance.

La enseñanza de la aplicación LibreOffice Calc utilizando entornos virtuales de aprendizaje en la facultad de Ciencias Médicas Salvador Allende / The teaching Libre Office Calc aplication using virtual learning enviroments in the school of Medicine "Salvador Allende"

El programa de la asignatura Informática Médica no cuenta con la cantidad de horas suficientes para el trabajo con la aplicación LibreOffice Calc, por lo que se hace necesario buscar nuevas alternativas para su impartición, proponiéndose como objetivo estructurar la impartición de la aplicación LibreOffice Calc, correspondiente al tema III de la asignatura Informática Médica, a los estudiantes de primer año de la carrera de Medicina, utilizando el Entorno Virtual de Enseñanza Aprendizaje, Moodle. El curso se estructuró en cuatro temas. Los recursos utilizados fueron: Páginas de textos, páginas Web, presentaciones electrónicas, orientaciones para el trabajo, las actividades a realizar por los estudiantes, cuestionarios y actividades de autoevaluación. El uso de un Entorno Virtual de Enseñanza Aprendizaje para la enseñanza de la Hoja Electrónica Calc no sólo apoyó este proceso, sino que además le concedió más tiempo a los estudiantes para la realización de tareas prácticas, contribuyendo así al desarrollo de habilidades(AU)

Medical Informatics subject syllabus does not have enough contact hours to work with the application LibreOffice Calc, thus it is mandatory to look for new alternatives for its teaching, proposing as objective, the structuring of the classes of the application LibreOffice Calc that it corresponds to the theme III of the Medical Informatics for the students of first year of Medicine career by means of the use of the Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle. The course was structured through four themes. The used resources were: Pages of texts, Web pages, electronic presentations, working guidelines, activities to be performed by students, questionnaires and self-assessment activities. The use of the Virtual Learning Environments for the teaching of the Calc Spreadsheet did not only help in this process, but rather it allowed more time to the students to also solve the practical tasks, contributing this way to the development of abilities(AU)