Enhancing medical students' communicative skills in a 3D virtual world

This study explores the effects of how collaborating in a virtual world (VW) enhanced learners' healthcare professional-patient communicative skills, including physician-patient and inter-professional communication in medical discourse. Through a quasi-experimental design case study, 47 Taiwanese Freshman English students from a College of Medicine participated in this study for 3 weeks. Research data included video analysis of students' role-play creations in two different media (on the stage versus VW program), transcripts of learners' role-plays, and questionnaire results of students' perceptions of role-playing. The results include (1) rich description of the scenarios and plots created by students in the VW group, (2) VW group learners' better performance in using effective communicative skills when role-playing via the VW, including building rapport with the patients and colleagues and showing empathy and understanding toward patients; and (3) VW group learners' higher evaluation of how the role-play helped their English language skills, healthcare professional-patient communication and learning in general. The study concludes by discussing the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the results.