Virtual practice environments: perparation for the real world

May 2009

The faculty’s two VPEs are now in full operation, providing innovative teaching spaces where students can immerse themselves in a workplace environment and prepare for experiential practice placements.

Situated on the first floor of the Scott building, the VPE spaces replace the traditional model pharmacy, which served the faculty well for many years but was monofunctional and had become outdated. The VPEs have the unique capacity to create a virtual community pharmacy environment as well as other healthcare and industrial settings applicable to pharmaceutical science students.

The technology comprises two high-resolution screens in each space, creating a 10 metre wide by three metre high expanse for projecting video material and still images. Each space has three projectors capable of casting either a single 10 metre wide image across the room or three separate images, such as a PowerPoint presentation, video and a still image.

“Having a video image on the screen that almost fills your field of vision makes you feel like you’re there,” said Greg Duncan (BPharm 1981), a member of the project team. “Our students are generally young and healthy, so they may not have visited a pharmacy very often. And even if they have, they may not have noticed everything that occurs.”

High resolution video cameras in the VPEs will allow teaching staff to capture students role-playing their responses to patient case studies. Students then view this footage to reflect on the effectiveness of their communication.

This year, the application of the technology has stepped up a notch. The faculty has worked with a post-production group at Monash’s Faculty of Information Technology to develop ‘green screen’ technology, allowing actor patients to be brought into the pharmacy video.

In taking a patient history, rather than asking questions by rote, students can look up at the screen, check the physical appearance of the patient and then modify their questioning. For example, if the patient looks to be an elderly female, the students can ask themselves if they need to enquire how old the patient is, or if she could be pregnant or breastfeeding.

“The VPE is a great way for students to experience a pharmacy environment. It allows them the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them in a way that doesn’t put patients at risk,” said Associate Professor Jennifer Marriott (BPharm 1971), director of the Bachelor of Pharmacy. “It’s not designed to replace experience in real practice, but to be better prepared for their experiential placements and to deal with real people.”

Learning experiences in the VPEs are not limited to pharmacy-specific examples. In the future, academic staff will use the rooms to teach the Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science students. Virtual scenarios, such as industrial tablet manufacturing, will be used to put elements of the pharmaceutical science course into context.

Using the technology available in the VPE spaces, the teaching experience can be highly controlled. For consistency across small group classes led by different tutors, the unit coordinator can be ‘green screened’ into the video, to set the scene and outline the objectives of the teaching session. As well as using medicines as props, tutors can open a window on the screen that shows students what the product looks like in its latest packaging.

The future application of the VPE spaces and technology seems unlimited. A current project under development will see medical students working with pharmacy students on case-based problems via videoconference.

“We can have pharmacy students here and medical students at a remote site working on a case that they’ll share on the screen,” explained Greg. “We could even have a remote facilitator, who is a clinical specialist either in pharmacy or medicine. As an example, we’ve been working on an inter-professional learning process centred on older patients who are taking multiple medicines.”

The VPE teaching spaces are unique to the faculty and have generated much interest among pharmacy educators and professionals nationally and internationally.

“These spaces give the faculty the capacity to easily adapt to changes within the profession and to allow our students to experience those changes in a safe environment,” said Associate Professor Marriott.

“The investment by the faculty in the design and construction of the two VPEs is approximately $1.2 million and this represents a significant and strategic commitment to funding leading edge educational infrastructure within the faculty,” said Professor Bill Charman.

“These major investments are not easy to make within the current higher education funding environment but we believe we must make them to provide a contemporary learning environment to support the provision of exciting new developments in our redesigned curricula. Leadership and innovation in education are not cheap. But the faculty is not prepared to accept the alternative of maintaining the status quo when we know there is a better way of providing education,” he said.