With our growing ‘expertise’ in virtual gaming simulation, we were invited to lead a simulation session with international students in occupational therapy and speech&language therapy in Vienna, at FH Campus Wien.
From a didactical point of view the VGS “Meal Assistance” served best the learning objectives and audience as this game promotes the application of knowledge and skills related to meal assistance of an individual diagnosed with dysphagia.
Although the game was mainly developed by nurses and intended for baccalaureate nursing students, VGS has again proven to be a powerful learning tool as the occupational therapy and speech&language students appreciated this workshop highly on a range of interprofessional learning. Debriefing encourages students to think about the decisions they make and the way they are made. A successful debriefing reveals underlying mental frameworks. This also happened in Vienna: where students explain their professional framework to each other and thus gain a better understanding of why another discipline would choose a different approach to the same problem.
So nice to see that students referred to the benefits of the game in their group work where there wanted to tackle the difficulies in interprofessional working. I am also proud to share their evaluation;
Thank you FH Wien for giving me the chance to talk about virtual gaming simulation to students and teachers!