Our New Community Sharing Feature: A Collaborative Repository for Immersive Virtual Reality Scenarios

This feature leverages the innovative, collaborative nature of the UbiSim community, providing a diverse selection of high-quality scenarios for programs who are expanding their simulation library. Read on to learn more about the inspiration behind this exciting new feature, and how we made this dream a reality for our community of UbiSim creators!‍

A UbiSim Partner’s Experience

‍The inaugural release of the Community Sharing feature includes an immersive virtual reality scenario designed by Frank Stickler, II, BSN, RN, CNRN, CCRN, Simulation Coordinator and Instructor at the Community College of Denver (CCD) Department of Nursing. The scenario is designed for fundamental nursing students and focuses on the physical assessment of a medically underserved patient in a free community clinic. Frank designed this scenario using the UbiSim Editor, which seamlessly guides educators through the entire design process. Speaking of his experience designing the scenario, Frank said, “The UbiSim Editor makes the flow of creating the simulation easy to understand and easy to accomplish.”

Through a health promotion lens, Frank’s scenario challenges nurse learners to build key transferable skills, including clinical judgment, physical assessment, patient education, and therapeutic communication. The scenario has been run successfully with CCD nursing students, preparing them to care for patients in a community setting where there is a critical need for nurses. Reflecting on how his students responded to the scenario, Frank explains, “UbiSim helps with the suspension of disbelief and challenges students to talk with the patient. This enhances communication and the development of interpersonal relationships that may not be as realistic with traditional manikin-based simulation.”

"The UbiSim Editor makes the flow of creating the simulation easy to understand and easy to accomplish."

"The UbiSim Editor makes the flow of creating the simulation easy to understand and easy to accomplish." Frank Stickler, II, BSN, RN, CNRN, CCRN, Simulation Coordinator and Instructor at the Community College of Denver

The Community Sharing feature will be included in all UbiSim subscriptions at no additional cost. Frank notes, “When compared to other competitors’ cloud programs the fact that community sharing is included in your subscription is amazing and less of a financial burden on institutions.” Nursing programs are under ever-increasing financial pressures and having these excellent scenarios available for use and modification by the diverse family of UbiSim partners only adds to the value proposition of the platform.

The Inspiration Behind the Community Sharing Feature

‍As an educational community, simulationists have a proud history of coming together to share ideas, lessons learned, and best practices. In this way, the field of simulation has grown from its humble beginnings at the fringes of the educational endeavor to the world-wide, evidence-based phenomenon it is today.

Simulationists are a diverse group of educators, operational specialists, and creators who bring a variety of backgrounds and experiences to the field of simulation. This collaborative outlook benefits educators and learners alike as innovations can be widely disseminated within the simulation community, sparking great ideas and approaches that benefit learners, educators, and ultimately the patients we serve. This collaboration continues today among the innovative simulationists who develop and utilize immersive virtual reality in simulation education.

We at UbiSim actively sought a method to support and facilitate this collaborative spirit in simulation. We pondered, and discussed, and reached out to our partner programs to devise a means by which UbiSim could contribute to this brilliant, collaborative simulation community. The question remained to be answered: how could we not just contribute to the simulation community, but also support those who wished to contribute as well?

The Power of Community

‍In the end, all answers pointed in one direction: a community platform where the best scenarios created by UbiSim partners could be shared, enhanced, and adapted. Thus, our Community Sharing feature was born, inspired by the robust scenarios our partners have designed with the Editor, UbiSim’s web-based simulation authoring tool.

Now nurse learners across the world can benefit from scenarios designed by UbiSim partners. Using the UbiSim Editor, educators can further customize the shared scenarios to meet the specific objectives of their target learners and best practices of their region.

At UbiSim we understand that a well-designed, evidence-based scenario is the foundation of a high-quality simulation-based experience and we are honored to provide a platform where the excellent work of our partners can be disseminated. The UbiSim partner community is excited at the prospect of sharing scenarios they created within the UbiSim platform. Our programs are eager to show off their excellent simulation scenarios, and to benefit from the inspired simulations created by their peers.

To support community collaboration, the Community Sharing feature is a bi-directional, collaborative space where those who share scenarios can access and use scenarios shared by other institutions. This allows UbiSim partners representing a wide spectrum of program size, learner population, and location to learn from, support, and contribute to the greater simulation education community. UbiSim partners have already begun contributing excellent scenarios to the Community Sharing feature, with many more on the way.

Community Sharing - The Way of the Future

‍Frank’s experience with the UbiSim Community Sharing feature highlights that the spirit of collaboration is alive and well within the UbiSim community. This crowdsourced scenario repository will continue to grow, providing an ever-increasing library of high-quality simulation scenarios to programs who utilize the UbiSim platform. The global reach of the very best minds in simulation will only increase as more programs adopt UbiSim and contribute to the Community Sharing feature. In this way, UbiSim will proudly support the legacy of collaboration, quality, and sharing that is the hallmark of the simulation community. This is just one more step in our continuing quest to embody and enhance the UbiSim mission: leveraging the unique advantages of VR to make nursing simulation more accessible, impactful, and realistic than ever before. The Community Sharing feature is our latest offering to enhance nursing education, and thereby improve patient outcomes across the globe.[button link="https://www.ubisimvr.com/request-demo/"]Contact us today for a free demo![/button][/post_readmore]UbiSim continues its mission of expanding access to high-quality, immersive virtual reality simulation scenarios with the release of our new Community Sharing feature. Now educators and simulationists across the globe can access our repository, where they are able to share their scenarios with the UbiSim community and use scenarios designed by fellow UbiSim partners.