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PRESS RELEASE

7th February 2012

Daden release results of its Authoring Tools for Immersive Training survey

Birmingham UK, 7th February 2012: The results of an Authoring Tools for Immersive Training surveyhave been released by Daden Limited (Daden). The survey indicated that educators want to be able toeasily create 3D training exercises themselves without needing the help of technologists nor expertknowledge of how to build the "sets" in their chosen virtual world. The survey asked questions aboutcurrent uses of immersive worlds for learning, experiences of PIVOTE (Daden's existing system) andusers' requirements for the future development of authoring tools.

Nearly 47% of the respondents were from education, 15% from the health professional training sector and interestingly 19% were from the corporate sector - especially as there's little sign of a significantuptake of immersive training in that area. Second Life, OpenSim and Unity were the top three platformsand Second Life, despite the removal of the educational discount, dominates still with 39% respondentsusing it.

Of those using immersive worlds for learning, 44% were using them at least monthly with about 17%regularly using them on a daily or weekly basis and over 58% on a quarterly basis. Encouragingly mostsessions were between half an hour and two hours - matching typical lesson durations. This all suggeststhat tutors are really using them, not just dabbling or doing proofs-of-concept.

Existing PIVOTE users generally valued the product and thought it was heading in the right direction andliked the "ability to create learning exercises with little scripting". Top of respondent’s wish list for improvements to PIVOTE included making it even easier to use, improved user interfaces, and smoother incorporation of media. Daden are currently developing a Second Generation Immersive LearningAuthoring Tool, known as OPAL. The requirements for the future section of the survey was to gaugeopinions on functionality and features for this.

The top four functions rated as "vital" importance for an authoring tool for virtual worlds were the ability to"set up rules/logic for actions" (48%), "allow multiple choice questions" (40%), "can choose from a libraryof objects for an exercise" (39%) and be "object orientated" (select an object to set a behaviour) (38%) -all of which will be available in OPAL. Users felt it was also vital, in terms of "deploy and play functions"that the authoring tool has the flexibility to support multiple virtual worlds and that exercises can beplayed and tested in 2D on the web. PIVOTE already has this, and OPAL will further improve on thisfunctionality.

The ability to log all student/group actions was rated the most important reporting and integration featureof an authoring tool. Being able to pass student results back to Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's)and Learning Management Systems (LMS) were also high on the agenda. Both features will be presentin the first release of OPAL.

David Burden, Daden's Managing Director says "We we hope that OPAL will give educators and trainersworking in immersive environments (and those new to such environments) a powerful tool with which tocreate immersive experiences in a cost-effective way." 

The survey results confirmed that OPAL will address most if not all the requirements expressed by therespondents in its first release - planned for March 2012. Users want a good, easy to use and flexibleauthoring tool for the standard delivery of immersive learning exercises to PC's on their chosen platform.

The survey can be downloaded from Daden's website at

http://www.daden.co.uk/tools/download_files.html

8/3/2019 Virtual Authoring Tool Survey Results

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PRESS RELEASE

7th February 2012

Images

PIVOTE has been used in a wide variety of immersive learning projects including bereavement training (pictured)

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ABOUT DADENDaden Limited specialise in delivering innovative solutions in immersive learning, visual analytics, building visualisations andcreating interactive virtual personalities (chatbots). Daden's national and international clients range from the private sector tocentral and local government, education, public safety, health including the Ministry of Defence, the City of New York,Birmingham City Council and almost two dozen universities in the UK and abroad. Founded in 2004, Daden are based atBirmingham Science Park Aston, in Birmingham UK. Daden are members of Intellect the Trade Association for the UKTechnology Industry.

ABOUT PIVOTEDeveloped by Daden originally for the JISC funded PREVIEW project. PIVOTE lets you create learning exercises on the internetusing simple forms-based interface. These exercises can be played in Second Life, OpenSim, on the web or even on a mobilephone. They can also be ported between virtual worlds and student performace data can be exported for use in Virtual LearningEnvironments (VLEs). The initial focus was on developing training simulations for Paramedic students. Since then Daden andothers have used PIVOTE to deliver a wide variety of immersive learning projects, including: training emergency shelter managers; exercises for bereavement training; teaching inner-city kids about knife-crime; simulations of genetic labatoryequipment; and processes to learning visualisations of accounting and finance. PIVOTE based projects have won awardsincluding: 2009 Times Higher Education (THE) Awards and US Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge (FVWC) 2010 & 2011.

For further information contact:

SoullaStylianouMarketing Director Daden Limited

E: soulla.stylianou@daden.co.ukT: +44(0) 121 2505678