Evaluation Of A 3d Simulated Practice Learning Environment

The importance of health and social services is increasing as European society grows older and unemployment and relocation across Europe increases. This growing demand for services is creating unprecedented pressures on health and social care systems. Despite differences in political approaches and institutional frameworks, health and social services across Europe face similar challenges in adjusting to demographic ageing, societal change, rising expectations and consumerism, changing employment and family patterns, evolving technological opportunities and funding issues. A key part of the sector deals with vulnerable people. Education and training plays a pivotal role in developing those who work with vulnerable people and, more generally, the social services sector. In many parts of Europe, the sector has a strong emphasis on learning and assessing skills for job roles in real practice environments ("practice learning"). In some qualifications, practice learning can be almost 40% of the total learning time. There are also on-going demands for practice learning with new qualified professionals and professionals as part of CPD. There are clear logistical challenges in arranging practice opportunities where trainees are able to learn the core skills of the job and receive high quality support, supervision and assessment of their practice from suitably qualified mentors/practice assessors. Furthermore, finding sufficient numbers of such placements has been a challenge for the last 30 years. However, there are also other challenges; e.g. risks associated with work-based learning and the safety and well-being of service users in giving trainees access to their lives. This paper discusses the development of a 3D simulated practice learning environment that focuses on supporting people who work with young children. The paper then presents the findings from a large-scale teacher training programme for the game that was run across various European countries with 120 participants.