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AI Chatbots in Sim: Improving the Student Experience
48 Plays3 months ago
Nursing academic Dani Gardner from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Technology Sydney shares her project about using AI chatbots in simulation scenarios may provide the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of this approach for enhancing nursing students’ experience.
Her study explored the use of AI chatbots as the ‘patient’ voice in simulation scenarios to enhance nursing students’ communication skills.
An AI communication training platform was utilised in clinical lab classes, allowing students to practice communication and clinical reasoning, whilst performing practical skills. The focus was on gaining patient consent and providing reassurance before performing assessments and procedures.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:40
Melanie Barlow
All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Simulation Happy Hour. we have Kerry, hey Kerry.
00:00:48
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Hi there.
00:00:49
Melanie Barlow
And Jane.
00:00:51
Jane Frost
Hi.
00:00:52
Melanie Barlow
and I'm Mel and we're missing Jenny today, but that's okay. She's a busy lady. And today we're really fortunate to have Danielle Gardner with us from the School of Nursing and Midwifery from the University of Technology in Sydney.
00:01:06
Melanie Barlow
She's a lecturer and a first year student experience coordinator and a subject coordinator for the School of Nursing. So, hey, Danny, how are you?
00:01:14
Dani Gardner
Hi, nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:01:17
Melanie Barlow
You're welcome. And so we caught up Oh, a couple
AI Chatbots in Nursing Education
00:01:22
Melanie Barlow
of times now. So you've presented this work at Simulation Showcase and then Jane and I caught up with you at the Council of Nursing and Midwifery Deans last year and we wanted to get you on board to have a chat about your work with AI chatbots within nursing and midwifery.
00:01:41
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
you
00:01:42
Dani Gardner
Yes.
00:01:44
Melanie Barlow
So when we saw you, you were, you'd run a pilot study
00:01:49
Dani Gardner
Mm-hmm.
00:01:50
Melanie Barlow
using it.
00:01:50
Dani Gardner
Yep.
00:01:51
Melanie Barlow
Can you tell us a bit about the pilot study?
00:01:53
Dani Gardner
Okay. so we did the pilot study in the spring semester of 2024, and I wanted to use AI chatbots in SIM to try and simulate a the voice of the of the patient.
00:02:09
Dani Gardner
And i've i'd come across a tool called SIM Converse, and I was introduced to this from a colleague at Canberra University where Jane had been previously.
00:02:22
Dani Gardner
so I know Jane had had a bit of experience with this. And I so looked at this product. i was i was I was playing around with it and I thought, well, how can we use this at the bedside?
00:02:32
Dani Gardner
So what I did basically is I took the laptop to the side of the bed and we set it up, you know, with the speakers and we were trying to just have it at the bedside and create a character that the students could
Challenges in Simulation Labs
00:02:45
Dani Gardner
interact with.
00:02:46
Dani Gardner
So we did a pilot study with three first year nursing classes. So it was just set up in one lab. So there was about, there was it was only in the one particular lab and it was the students on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning classes that were were all agreed to to be in in this study.
00:03:06
Dani Gardner
We filmed it using learning space technology so we could actually see what was happening. and we just ran the computer next to the bed space and students were to control the conversation by just pressing the spacebar.
00:03:19
Dani Gardner
So when pressing the spacebar, they would speak, release the spacebar, and then the chatbot would respond to them. So ran with, there's a mannequin in the bed for them to do all of the skills that they needed to do
00:03:28
Melanie Barlow
Was there a mannequin in the bed Okay.
00:03:34
Dani Gardner
But essentially what I wanted to do is I know when we do simulation, you know, we we have the actual scenario that's happening, but I wanted to take it back to basics and just do a normal basic nursing shift, probably a morning shift, where nothing crazy is really going to go on. There's no deteriorating patient or anything like that.
00:03:54
Dani Gardner
But the first year students just had to get consent. We had to introduce themselves to the patient, gain consent to do things and just explain and give reassurance of what they were doing. So it was very, very basic. But they had to do blood pressures. They had to do temperatures. They had to do pulse rate. They had to do a wound assessment. They had to assess for pain.
SimConverse: Advanced Conversation Agent
00:04:14
Dani Gardner
Because I found in the labs, when it's just a mannequin in the bed and it's voiced by their peers or or by their tutor, that
00:04:25
Dani Gardner
They're just really practicing their skills, but they're not really interacting with the patient. They're not communicating with the patient. And that's fine to learn your skills, but that's not realistic of a morning shift.
00:04:36
Dani Gardner
If you've got a patient that might have pain, then you have to fix the pain first before you can go on to doing their wound assessment or getting them out of the chair for breakfast or any of those things. So what might take 15 minutes in skills by doing it at the bedside could actually take an hour with all of the other little stuff that's happening.
00:04:56
Dani Gardner
And that was what I was trying to represent for the students.
00:04:59
Melanie Barlow
I have so much to say, but Jane, go.
00:05:03
Jane Frost
So, Dani, could you just explain a bit more? Both you and I have used SimConverse, but for our listeners, we've had people talk about chatbots before and they are just written, but this is a verbal communication.
00:05:16
Jane Frost
So I just think that that aspect, SimConverse, needs to sort of be clear so that it shows what you're doing.
00:05:22
Dani Gardner
Yes. Yep.
00:05:24
Jane Frost
So could you explain that maybe?
00:05:26
Dani Gardner
Essentially, it's actually a conversation agent. So it's a little bit elevated above a chatbot. A chatbot essentially has pre-recorded responses. So if you're you know if you're talking with the Commonwealth Bank chatbot, it's got its responses that will answer the questions. Whereas this has linguistic fluidity, basically, that it it can it can go a little bit I want to say rogue with its answers because it it can get it can be a bit more experimental.
00:05:53
Dani Gardner
So it is programmed in with its own, it knows its backstory.
00:05:53
Melanie Barlow
I know.
00:05:58
Dani Gardner
It knows, well, my patient Justin, it knows his age, he knows his date of birth, he knows where he lives, he knows his story, his medical history, and it can go on with it can go with that, but it also uses the web to be able to build on that story a little bit. So for example, Justin knows where he where he lives in Sydney. He can use surrounding areas because of what he can find on the internet about that, just to bring out the personality a little bit more.
00:06:30
Dani Gardner
So SimConverse is designed for students to have a remote conversation or they can have it in class, but it's designed to have a conversation on their device with a patient, but it's been created with its own backstory. and they it's designed to help build confidence and experience with certain situations. So, you know, things like a patient that might be or an escalating relative that's upset, you you can help to de-escalate that
Student Communication Challenges
00:07:03
Dani Gardner
situation.
00:07:04
Dani Gardner
But for me, i was making a patient that was just a patient that was in bed, he had a diabetic foot ulcer, was having difficulty mobilising, he had some pain and the first year students just had to navigate that conversation, as i said, to get consent, to introduce themselves, to be able to move on to the next steps instead of just going ahead and not speaking to the patient and just doing the skill.
00:07:05
Melanie Barlow
uh
00:07:33
Melanie Barlow
Yeah, I love that. So you probably know I have a bent for communication.
00:07:38
Dani Gardner
Yes.
00:07:40
Melanie Barlow
And so what we tend to find is the clinical skill is broken down in detail, yet the communication element is tick box saying effectively communicated with the patient tick.
00:07:53
Melanie Barlow
And it's not broken down in the same amount of detail. And what I really love about this is what I'm hearing that They have to go through those motions just as much as the the clinical skill in order to achieve the goal for that learning activity, which I think is fantastic.
00:08:12
Dani Gardner
Well, yeah, what I was finding is, and I've i've said this in my talk before, part of the idea for this was my 15-year-old daughter who can organise a whole birthday on a WhatsApp chat but can't even ask for a glass of water in a restaurant.
00:08:28
Dani Gardner
And I'm finding with the students, especially with fitness, the...
00:08:31
Melanie Barlow
That is so true.
00:08:32
Jane Frost
Thank you.
00:08:34
Dani Gardner
the The younger students straight out of high school have said openly said, how do you communicate? How do you manage teams? How do you speak to patients? How do we learn that?
00:08:46
Dani Gardner
And it is difficult to teach. So, and when they go on placement, you can't standardize the experience that they're going to have. So how can we get the most out of it without using an actor?
Technological Enhancements in Simulations
00:08:59
Dani Gardner
Using an actor is great, but if we don't, and it's expensive, If we don't have that resource available, how can we do it in another way?
00:09:01
Melanie Barlow
expensive yeah
00:09:08
Dani Gardner
And the great thing about Synconverse is you can ramp up the level of anxiety or if you want the patient to be a bit obstructive to care, you can ramp that up by recording that.
00:09:21
Dani Gardner
You can make them more anxious. You know, I've made this patient a bit of a conspiracy theorist that he didn't trust medicine.
00:09:27
Dani Gardner
and And so when you would want to give medications, he would ask and question, what is that? So the students would have to then provide that information.
00:09:37
Melanie Barlow
And so how do you pre-brief the students then to authentically engage with the mannequin, the patient in the bed, but they're tapping the computer?
00:09:47
Dani Gardner
Yep. Yeah, so when we first did the study, it was when they were having, because they were having to use their hand to activate the space bar, A lot of the times i would be there with them so they could actually do it because otherwise there was a lot of hopping back to the space by jumping back and forth around the bed space and it wasn't as authentic.
00:10:04
Melanie Barlow
Mm-hmm.
00:10:08
Dani Gardner
So I pre-briefed them by doing an example of how I would do it and just explaining to them that, you know, it was the same patient every week that they were going to be interacting with.
00:10:20
Dani Gardner
So there was no real difference in the scenario apart from maybe the level of anxiety or the level of obstructiveness that I set. And I would just demonstrate it for them.
00:10:30
Dani Gardner
But I found
Ethical and Educational Integration of AI
00:10:32
Dani Gardner
on the learning space recordings that when I was at the bedside, they were much more interactive with the patient. If I went into the control room and let them do it themselves, they might stop using the SimConverse a little bit.
00:10:46
Dani Gardner
So that was an issue. The other thing that I noticed was that because they were doing a wound assessment, that they had gloves on, they were then pressing the space bar with the gloves on.
00:10:56
Dani Gardner
So that was a big issue. And so we had to then, I was like, right, i can't teach this because I'm essentially teaching students to that it's okay to touch a computer with gloves on and that's not okay.
00:11:07
Melanie Barlow
Yes, negative learning.
00:11:08
Dani Gardner
So i didn't want to bring in this infection control issue. So that's when we started working with, well, we'd already been working with my colleagues in engineering in in Fiat, because we had a a student, and an honours student that was working in the sim labs as a sim technician.
00:11:30
Dani Gardner
And so she decided to use this as her capstone project for her honours. And she's like, right, these are all the problems that we found in those four first four weeks. And then she built in the next phase of the study, which was adding the microphones around the bed and foot pedals underneath.
00:11:47
Dani Gardner
So instead of them touching the space bar to do it, she built in foot pedals that were placed around the bed space. So when you press the foot pedal with your foot, that would then activate the space bar.
00:12:00
Dani Gardner
So you didn't have to use your hands, your your gloved hands.
00:12:01
Melanie Barlow
Oh, cool.
00:12:03
Dani Gardner
So that was the next stage of body.
00:12:04
Melanie Barlow
Very cool.
00:12:05
Dani Gardner
And then we just sort of spoke the students through that so they could they could try using a different way. And that was a game changer.
00:12:13
Melanie Barlow
That's great, partnering with engineering to come up with a solution.
00:12:16
Dani Gardner
Mm.
00:12:16
Melanie Barlow
How cool is that?
00:12:18
Dani Gardner
Mm.
00:12:19
Melanie Barlow
So you have progressed this work since that pilot.
00:12:23
Dani Gardner
Yes.
00:12:25
Melanie Barlow
Can you explain where you've gone with it?
00:12:26
Dani Gardner
Yes. Okay. so we found that we had, with the foot pedals, we had much better engagement with the students. They remembered to do it. The conversations got a lot deeper and it was much easier for them to understand because we had more microphones around. It would pick up the sound of the voices. So there was the conversations were better because the chatbot was understanding things better.
00:12:51
Dani Gardner
It wasn't mishearing words.
00:12:54
Dani Gardner
Oh, there was one day actually where the chatbot or the conversation agent got cranky with one of the students and I loved this. And we did talk about it then in the debrief, but it actually raised its voice at one of the students and got really cranky because he couldn't understand her. She was very quietly spoken and she did have an accent.
00:13:15
Dani Gardner
But we brought that into the teaching saying, well, you need to be able to handle this type of situation because you will have times when a patient won't have their hearing aid in or they might not be able to understand your accent either. And patients, you know, they might be in pain, they might be short with you. So you have to be able to take this on board as a learning opportunity. And so she this the student wasn't distressed by it at all. So what we did when we were moving forward is we decided we got another teaching and learning grant for 2025. And we then decided to implement the chatbot into different stages of the curriculum. And it wasn't just in nursing, it was in public health as well. So we had first year, second year and third year nursing that we use subjects that we implemented this in and also a postgrad subject in the School of Public Health, which is diabetes education and management.
00:14:11
Dani Gardner
So for first year students, we did the Justin Davies scenario again, which is the patient the diabetic patient with the foot ulcer. And we used it in class with the foot pedals. So the students could control it with the foot pedals for this year. And we had it in every class. So every single student in first year was exposed to it. The problem with this, though, is the ethics that I wasn't allowed to fill.
AI in Diverse Nursing Scenarios
00:14:37
Dani Gardner
because there was no, because it was implemented into the curriculum, there was no opt out for students. so students had to have experience with this patient. So I wasn't allowed to film it. I could observe, but I couldn't,
00:14:49
Dani Gardner
film it in case there was someone that wanted to not be part of the study so i was able to get the transcript and I've been able to read back through those conversations and I've been able to do surveys on the students that wanted to be involved but I wasn't able to film it which was a bit of a shame that was first year Second year we did, and this and now this was an optional, like an opt-in for the students, and we ran it through STUVAC, which we call Simulation Week, and it was before their mental health placement, and we made a clinic situation. So it was a patient coming in for and for an outpatient visit with a mental health nurse, and we set up a clinic room. Patient was in normal civilian clothes, mannequin again in the chair, it was not a nice sort of warm environment, cups of tea and the students were to do a mental health assessment. it was a patient who was a Scottish expat, in Australia, feeling quite isolated, missing her family and with some, and anxiety symptoms. So they had to have a conversation with her.
00:15:58
Dani Gardner
So that was the second year subject. Third year, this was really interesting. Third year was a critical care subject. So it was the critical care patient. It was a NICU patient and it was the mother that was the the patient that they had to converse with. She was 12 hours postpartum and she had never been in a NICU situation before. So the students had to engage with her, reassure her and explain what was happening to her baby. Sorry, Jane, I saw you had a question.
00:16:32
Jane Frost
No, continue telling us how you used it and I'll chip in after if that's okay.
00:16:34
Dani Gardner
Okay. So that was, yeah, so third year was really interesting. The conversations got a lot deeper in that and the students were really quite challenging of the chatbot. They were really trying to push the boundaries there. third And then post-grad was in the Diabetes Education Management Grad Cert and the students were using it remotely.
00:17:02
Dani Gardner
But they had to use i have an interview with a diabetic patient and, again, in like a clinic sort of situation and implement that.
00:17:09
Jane Frost
Thank you.
00:17:12
Dani Gardner
But then we also had the opportunity for that as a drop-in as well where we set up the clinic situation like we did with the mental health patient. So with the clinic
Managing Feedback and Costs of AI Tools
00:17:20
Dani Gardner
situations, the pedal was under the desk and you would still control it with the foot pedal.
00:17:20
Melanie Barlow
Well done.
00:17:25
Dani Gardner
and the computer was just on the desk to to be able to hear it and the mannequin would be next to the clinician and there was a microphone there as well.
00:17:55
Melanie Barlow
Jane.
00:17:56
Dani Gardner
The difference between the level of conversations with the first years to the third years was very noticeable in terms of how they progressed on their learning journey.
00:18:09
Melanie Barlow
jane
00:18:11
Jane Frost
I've got a few questions. The first one is, well, first one's more of a statement. I think it's really great that you've combined different simulation on modalities, the AI chatbot with mannequins to enhance that sort of realistic nature of interaction. So applaud you on that.
00:18:31
Dani Gardner
Thank you. Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:18:35
Melanie Barlow
Yes.
00:18:37
Jane Frost
And I guess the third one is around cost and how you've managed that, because sometimes licences are quite costly for large groups of students. And I'm interested, you said you've implemented it across nursing.
00:18:53
Jane Frost
And so I'm just wondering how you approached that.
00:18:58
Dani Gardner
Yep. I mean, essentially with the way SimConverse works is that the the university purchases the licence for the 12 months or for whatever the time is, and then you pay per conversation credit. And those conversation credits can go from 10 minutes, 20 minutes, as long as you want to have it, but then this is for the students to have their conversations remotely. And that's that's great because that student then gets individual feedback on what they've been doing and what they've said.
00:19:29
Dani Gardner
When we did it in the classroom situation, i did a little bit differently. I call it off-label use of the of the platform, but I would log in or the the the tutor would log in in the class and it would just run on that one credit.
00:19:45
Dani Gardner
So pros and cons of that is that yes, we get the transcript, but you can't identify who said what and you can't get individual feedback of SimConverse to that student.
00:19:58
Dani Gardner
So for the first years, that was okay. We were able to, that was a trade-off that we were willing to have because the students, we just wanted them to have the experience of Sim and actually having those conversations where they had to introduce themselves, they had to get consent.
00:20:14
Melanie Barlow
But you could debrief them.
00:20:15
Dani Gardner
But you can debrief them, yes, and you can go through the transcript later.
00:20:16
Melanie Barlow
Yeah.
00:20:19
Melanie Barlow
Uh huh.
00:20:20
Dani Gardner
It's just that, yeah, you you would not have that individual feedback of what they did well or what they didn't do well.
00:20:26
Melanie Barlow
Uh huh.
00:20:26
Dani Gardner
With the drop-in clinics that we did, we had the option then of letting it run or doing individualised feedback. So then in terms of cost, you've got to work it out of how many credits we're going to use and how many students are going to be coming. You know, if you've got a cohort of 600 students, and each one is going to do that individually, then that was going to use up more credits. There was one other scenario that we did, sorry, with the first years before they actually came into the labs, we did a group scenario in one of their theoretical classes. So was a tabletop activity where they had one group ludit leader and they had six students in the group and they had to come prepared with
00:21:09
Dani Gardner
questions that they would ask the patient in an out outpatient pred or pre-admission clinic sort of situation.
Student Progress and Learning Observations
00:21:17
Dani Gardner
So they actually got to meet Justin before they came in to their labs because this subject ran first. So they did that. So we were able to cut down on costs there because we were sharing one credit with the six students in the group.
00:21:30
Dani Gardner
And that was logged on by the students. So they were able to get individual feedback. in that because you could then look at the transcript and each one of them had to introduce themselves so you could say hi my name's danny so in that part you know that danny is talking so that wasn't that was a good way as well of using it a little bit more cost effective not using as many credits using six credits in a class of 24 or four four credits for the class with six students or however however many students you had in the group With the students that were in third year, again, we ran it like the the first year.
00:21:46
Melanie Barlow
Uh-huh.
00:22:08
Dani Gardner
So we just logged in with one person, it just kept running. So we couldn't get the individual feedback, but it was interesting for me just to go through the transcripts all the same and see how the difference in language and the difference in depth of conversation went compared to the first year students.
00:22:25
Dani Gardner
And then for the students in the grad cert, we did individual credits for them, but it was a much smaller cohort. So that's your paying per credit for
00:22:34
Melanie Barlow
Mm-hmm.
Implementing SimConverse in Institutions
00:22:36
Jane Frost
So, Dani, can I just clarify that? In terms of the credit, it can last all day? thought it was a spar conversation rather than...
00:22:36
Dani Gardner
that.
00:22:43
Dani Gardner
It could last not all day. No. it does It does cut out or i did it or it starts to get a bit repetitive with the answers.
00:22:56
Dani Gardner
So I would let it run for maybe an hour, an hour and a half, and then stop it in conversation and then start a whole new one. Because, yeah, it's like the the conversation agent, it's sort of, it's not like it exhausts all of its responses, but it just got a bit repetitive.
00:23:05
Melanie Barlow
Uh-huh.
00:23:15
Dani Gardner
So the experience wasn't quite as good. It's almost like he remembers what he's been saying and was getting a bit aggravated that it was getting asked the same question all the time.
00:23:26
Dani Gardner
So it wasn't as authentic.
00:23:26
Melanie Barlow
right.
00:23:28
Dani Gardner
So we would stop it and then do another one.
00:23:30
Jane Frost
Authentic patient response though,
00:23:32
Dani Gardner
Yeah.
00:23:32
Jane Frost
Yeah.
00:23:33
Dani Gardner
Yes. In, sorry, I've,
00:23:35
Melanie Barlow
Have you written any papers? Have you written any papers?
00:23:39
Dani Gardner
I have, I've written a paper that's getting published in the Journal of Healthcare Simulation. We're just waiting for that.
00:23:44
Melanie Barlow
Excellent.
00:23:45
Dani Gardner
That was submitted back in oh October, November. So, and it's been accepted.
00:23:50
Melanie Barlow
Okay.
00:23:51
Dani Gardner
i just haven't, it just hasn't been published yet. So that was just on the pilot. It's just in a short report.
00:23:55
Melanie Barlow
Excellent. We'll watch out for that.
00:23:57
Dani Gardner
Yeah, but there will be some more that comes out of this as i continue on with the PhD journey.
00:24:02
Melanie Barlow
Very good.
00:24:07
Melanie Barlow
Kerry.
00:24:07
Dani Gardner
Well,
00:24:08
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Hi, Danny. up Look, thank you for that. Now, i'm goingnna I'm going to go back to the basics again. I'm one of a listener listening to what you're having to say thinking this is so exciting.
00:24:18
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
I've never heard of SimConverse before. i have. But all right, so i'm goingnna I'm going to Google SimConverse. Tell me what do I need to do from here on. How do I actually get this implemented in my program?
00:24:33
Dani Gardner
well You can look at the demos online. so there's SimConverse. They've got, you know, if if you Google it, it will come up if you're looking in sort of, you know, Australasia, if you're in the UK or the US.
00:24:44
Dani Gardner
The guys that created SimConverse, they're actually from Sydney. They're Sydney-based. And their offices are not far from me, actually, so I can just wander on up the road. Initially, these guys came from University of Sydney and they created it is as a start-up. and have been working on it for quite a few years. It's it's in quite a lot of universities around. It's just a matter of the university purchasing the license, but when they purchase the license, it can be used, I mean, for us, it's faculty wide. When UTS purchases is everyone in the fact, every academic in the faculty of health will be able to implement it. And then it's just, as I said, how many credits that you're going to want to use. If you have 10,000 credits or less than 10,000 credits, there's a certain price point. But once you go over 10,000 credits, then it brings that price point right down. And it's a more cost effective option if you've got that volume of students. So it's just a matter of getting the license and working out you know how it's going to be used and if it's cost effective for the university.
00:25:53
Melanie Barlow
Yeah.
00:25:55
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Right, so I've now convinced the university that I'm going to be able to use SimConverse.
Standardizing Patient Communication
00:26:01
Dani Gardner
Yep.
00:26:02
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
So I've got mannequins in a classroom, but I've also got role play of students jumping in and out of beds as well.
00:26:06
Dani Gardner
Yep.
00:26:11
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Tell me how I might apply that then to, I'm asking the real basics, how do i then apply that to to mannequins?
00:26:15
Dani Gardner
Yep.
00:26:18
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
How you getting these stories to be connected to these mannequins or even if I was using role play?
00:26:26
Dani Gardner
So there is there's a library of patients that SynConverse already has. there's you know You can go in there and find, okay, what's the what what are the the benchmarks that the students have to achieve in this class with that sort of simulation? And you can find one that's very similar. or there is training on the academic end of creating your own patient character. So for us, we've created our own because we had in the curriculum already certain patients that they needed to...
00:26:54
Dani Gardner
needed to the students needed to work with. So with Justin, for example, he he was newly diagnosed diabetic outside the healthy weight range and needed some depression and anxiety. So we wanted him to be part of the UTS community. So I made him his character. He lives nearby. he had a bit of a backstory that he'd you know been divorced by about a year ago. and just building in all these things. So they found, SimConverse found me a character that was like that, and then I learnt all the prompts that I would need to put in, typed in the prompts, and i can tell you Justin has evolved a lot from 2024 to 2025. You know, he's now got a a full arm of tattoos, a full sleeve, And the students can ask him about that and he'll tell the story of why he got these tattoos, and which is, you know, really quite interesting. You know, he's, as I said, he's a bit of a conspiracy theorist. So you can build up. So the more the the character knows about itself, the more information it's going to give. If you keep it generic, it's going to give generic answers. The more you build it up. So the the academics themselves actually get training from SimConverse, from the education team, of how to create the characters and then how you create the activity.
00:28:10
Dani Gardner
And then you set that activity for the students to use. You can embed it in Canvas or whatever platform, teaching platform you use. And they then can, it's just a matter of clicking on the link or logging in to SimConverse.
00:28:24
Dani Gardner
You have to, the the the subject coordinator would have to load in the email addresses of the students of who is going to be using it.
00:28:31
Melanie Barlow
Oh.
00:28:35
Dani Gardner
for those students then to be able to access it but it's not hard to create a profile on that i did a quick little video of me using sim converse for my teaching staff to be able to learn how to log in and that was that was it pretty simple you just put in your email address it sends you a code and you just click on the activity you need to do
00:28:54
Melanie Barlow
Very good. So to wrap up, Dani, I know you're doing your PhD, so you might want not want to give too much away, but future directions.
00:29:06
Dani Gardner
so my, my interest is really in communication confidence of students. As I said, you know, the example from my daughter, from my 15 year old, I'm really interested in how we can develop that. And if we can, you know, if it is something that we can, we can start to build on by using these conversation agents. So I want to be able to get to the point of developing OSCE.
00:29:34
Dani Gardner
by using this. So when we do an OSCE and we are usually it's the the way we're doing it at UTS, it's on the mannequin patient, but the assessor is the voice of the patient.
00:29:37
Melanie Barlow
Thank you.
00:29:49
Dani Gardner
And I can find that that can vary quite a lot with how much the assessor speaks. So I'd like to be able to standardize the patient voice by using this sort of technology and the foot pedal of the and having that patient sit situation patient scenario very standardised by using the chatbot to do that.
00:30:11
Dani Gardner
And then the assessor is only then speaking when they need to, you know, if they need to be the person checking medications or something like that. So I'd like to do an RCT with X amount of students using it with the chatbot and X amount of students doing the...
00:30:29
Dani Gardner
with the assessor, the human assessor.
00:30:32
Melanie Barlow
Amazing.
00:30:33
Dani Gardner
I'd like to see what, and i want I want to see what they, and then I want to do some surveys and in-depth interviews of what the students thought if they're in this group or if they're in that group.
00:30:33
Melanie Barlow
amazing
00:30:43
Dani Gardner
So that's what I'm sort of working towards. Obviously, it's tricky with an OSCE because you have to have, it has to be equitable for all students. So I want to make sure it's right and we haven't got technical issues happening.
00:30:56
Dani Gardner
So there's a bit of work to do on that front. Back to Jane's question about the foot pedals, where do you get them? We just got them from Amazon. I nearly, yeah, it's it's pretty easy. i Although i nearly got the school's credit card shut down because they thought I was buying spyware, all spy equipment, when we were using the funds from our teaching and learning scholarship. They thought, you know, why they buying foot pedals and weird microphones and things like that? But once they understood what it was for,
00:31:27
Dani Gardner
it was much more accepted. So yeah, most of the products we got was my engineering colleagues sourced all of those. And we've got, I think we've got it set up to do, to run six bed spaces at the moment. So we've got enough foot pedals. So I like to have one either side. So two foot pedals, two microphones, one at the head, one at the foot of the bed and and a foot pedal on either side.
Conclusion and Wrap-up
00:31:49
Dani Gardner
And we just set it up in the bed spaces that have computers near them. So hoping to be able to run it in a lot more subjects this year.
00:31:58
Dani Gardner
That's the plan.
00:31:59
Melanie Barlow
Amazing work, Danny. Jane and Kerry, any last questions or thoughts?
00:32:05
Jane Frost
I think it's amazing, Jenny, and I think great job sorting out the the foot pedals and things like that.
00:32:06
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
No.
00:32:13
Jane Frost
Great innovation there.
00:32:16
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Yeah, looking forward to read more.
00:32:19
Dani Gardner
you i'm Yeah, yeah, I work quite closely with the guys from SimConverse and they're happy to, you know, support this, you know, different kind of way of using it because for them it's, you know, they're they're really interested in just all the different ways that we can we can teach and that we can and that students learn in terms of communication.
00:32:39
Dani Gardner
So, yeah, it's been really fun and it's great to come to work and be able to use this kind of technology and and the experimentation that we get to have.
00:32:45
Melanie Barlow
Yeah.
00:32:47
Dani Gardner
So it's really quite rewarding.
00:32:50
Melanie Barlow
Excellent. Well, it's early morning and I'm sipping my skinny flat white. But we ask all our guests this, Dani, if you were if she could have a like happy hour anywhere in the world, where would it be?
00:33:04
Melanie Barlow
And what would you be doing and sipping?
00:33:07
Dani Gardner
What would I be sipping? What time of day is it? Morning or afternoon?
00:33:10
Melanie Barlow
Any day, any time you like.
00:33:11
Dani Gardner
Yeah. wow Oh, look, I haven't had a holiday for a while, so I think I would like to go somewhere tropical and read a book that's for entertainment, not a book to study.
00:33:23
Melanie Barlow
Yes, it's for study.
00:33:25
Dani Gardner
that would really be really nice, somewhere warm by a pool. But then I'm also, you know, a bit of a skier, so I wouldn't mind sipping somewhere in the French Alps, après skiing as well.
00:33:35
Dani Gardner
So, yeah, I think I'm going to go with the après in the French Alps.
00:33:36
Melanie Barlow
How cool.
00:33:41
Melanie Barlow
Very nice.
00:33:42
Dani Gardner
Yeah.
00:33:42
Melanie Barlow
Great job. All right. Well, that wraps up another episode. Thanks for joining dan Danny and Kerry and Jane.
00:33:48
Dani Gardner
Thank you.
00:33:49
Melanie Barlow
We'll see you next time.
00:33:51
Jane Frost
Thanks.
00:33:51
Dani Gardner
Wonderful.
00:33:52
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
Yes.
00:33:52
Jane Frost
Bye.
00:33:52
Dani Gardner
Thanks, everybody.
00:33:53
Kerry Anne ReidSearl
it
00:33:53
Dani Gardner
Bye. bye