Development of an Immersive 3D Simulated Practice Environment for Social and Health Care Training

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) is the main regulatory body responsible for registering people who work in social services and is responsible for regulating their education and training. In Scotland there are currently 191, 000 social service workers who work with a variety of different people in a variety of different settings ranging from care home services for adults to early year settings such as nurseries and out of care clubs. Games-based Learning has developed a reputation with educationalists for being a potential form of supplementary learning and has been applied in a number of different subject areas. The current state of computer games technology allows the creation of games beyond that of 2D games or web-based eLearning games for increased engagement and immersion. It is therefore considered to be beneficial to use current computer games technology to create a realistic, 3D simulated practice environment for social and health care training. This paper will introduce a generic simulated practice environment developed in Unity for childhood practice training. The paper will describe the preliminary development of the games-based learning environment and discuss the implemented prototype. The paper presents an analysis of an expert evaluation that has been performed on this prototype and discusses future developmental directions.