Highlights

Transcript

Jon Brouchoud:
Welcome to episode 50 of Simulation Pulse Live. I’ve got Bill Ballo here from Madison College. I’m Jon Brouchoud from Acadicus. And today we’re going to have probably another short one while we’re in these transition weeks as a lot of schools are starting up their fall semesters. Just wanted to go over, I’ve had a couple of questions come in about the 3D recording feature. We’ve talked about it in the past, but I think it can’t, you know, we can’t go over it too many times. It’s a very, I don’t know, somewhat unusual feature in the world of VR simulation and just wanted to share a little look at what that is and how that works. And I’m going to share my screen. And here we are in the commons. So this is where you can go. You can download Acadicus for free from our website. If you’ve got compatible hardware, you can go to acadicus.com. And then I think there’s a support section. You can download the client, install it and come on in. And when you’re in, when you’re launching Acadicus, you can come in as a guest and go to explore Acadicus, which will bring you to the commons and you’ll land here. And you can watch a few videos if you’d like. And then we’ve got a bunch of demonstration simulations over here. So I’m going to go into the EKG simulation. That’s one of our 3D recordings. And so I’m just going to walk over here and I’m just using my arrow keys or WASD keys to move around and then right-clicking and dragging to look in view. So I’m in non-VR mode. Obviously, I’m not wearing a headset, but if you had a compatible headset connected, you could come in in VR mode. And we’re going to go into the EKG lead placement, ECG lead placement. EKG or ECG, Bill, what do you think?

Bill Ballo:
It can be either. So I usually use ECG. The K is the German version of the cardiogram. And, you know, this was invented by a German scientist. So that’s why EKG versus ECG. So it’s a great question. So either one, either one works fine. And you know, the other thing, Jon, and you were probably going to mention this, but like all of the scenes that you see here, I can just download this to my room. Can’t I? Like I can pull this scene right into my lab room.

Jon Brouchoud:
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it’s already in there. If you go, if you have a lab in Acadicus or a campus with labs, you can go into your menu, go to simulations and shared library. And all of these simulations are here right out of the box. So, you know, all the open RN scenarios have those simulation plans that you can download. There are Google docs that you can look at, and then there’s a bunch of other simulations and these are available in every, in every private lab. So you’d have access to this. So in this case, EKG lead placement right here. So, yeah. And I’m logged in as an administrator, so I have access to this menu. Um, so yeah.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. And then if you want to make it your own a little bit too, like if you say, you know what, in my room, I don’t necessarily want the heart block stuff over there. I want that out of there. So you can just. You can just in, in your edit mode, click on it and click delete and that’s it. It’s done. And if you go, Oh man, I want it back. You just go back into the packs. You pull it back out and you put it back in.

Jon Brouchoud:
Absolutely. And we’ve got a bunch of different cardiac, in fact, I guess we took them out of this room. But yeah, there’s a bunch of different heart models and things you could bring in if you want to supplement your teaching. I think when Dr. Slamon recorded this, I think he was intending to include some mention of the AV heart block. So he wanted that in the scene. And I think he might actually reference it during his 3D recording. But Bill’s absolutely right. If you don’t like that there, if you want to emphasize other things, you can do that as well. And also, this simulation also has a board that will actually tell the students what they’ve done right and what they’ve done wrong. And we’ve gotten rid of that in the Commons demonstrations, just because we don’t want students to be able to come in and go in and sort of like see all of the answers before they’re coming in for simulation day. So that was a request by some of the schools that are working with Acadicus that they don’t want the answers to be revealed in the public available simulation. So that’s why we don’t see that here. But if you, if I were to actually go into my private lab and load this up, we would see that board. There so it shows, you know, if they make mistakes or if they place leads or stickers in the wrong locations, it’ll show those errors And if you get all this right, then the page writer does, you know show a proper EKG printout there so but we’ll watch a few seconds of the 3D recording and before I start this, you know, just as a kind of An overview of what this feature is it’s you’ll see Dr. Slamon, he’s from Nemours DuPont Children’s Hospital, he puts on a VR headset. He’s working in this case he was working from his own location at home, and he is logged in as an administrator in Acadicus in a lab that we set aside for the purpose of this 3D recording. And all he’s doing is putting on a headset, hitting record, and then doing his demonstration. So it’s capturing everything he’s saying and everything he’s doing. And once that’s completed, we can create what’s called a holocron. So in your menu, you can actually see the actual 3D recordings. In this case, there aren’t any in this room. This was created in a different room. But we can place that holocron in the scene and when the student or the learner comes in and they press play, they’ll be able to see that recording played back. Now the interesting thing from the perspective of an instructor, and Bill can speak to this as well because he’s created a bunch of 3D recordings also, When you’re creating it, you don’t really know where the student is going to be standing. So you have control over where the student is going to appear when they first come into the scene, but you don’t really see the student, obviously, because you’re recording it before anybody’s in there. So you have to keep that in mind if you’re doing a demonstration and you want to capture that, that you might want to think about where do you want the student to be positioned, where do you want them to load into the scene so that they’re facing the correct direction. So I’ll press play here and we’ll watch a few seconds of this.

Dr. Nick Slamon:
Hello, I’m Dr. Nick Slamon. I’m a pediatric intensivist from Wilmington, Delaware. And today we’re going to talk a little bit about the proper way to apply and attach a 12-lead EKG on a patient. The reasons for EKG measurement are varied and many, but in general, They could be screening to see what the patient’s heart function is. They could be trying to rule out something like a myocardial infarction or heart attack. Or they could be to try to capture someone who is complaining of symptoms that could be consistent with an arrhythmia. And in general, the 12-lead EKG is generated from 10 stickers and 10 leads. You may ask yourself, well, how does 10 stickers get you what’s called a 12-lead EKG? if we properly position those stickers and leads anatomically.

Jon Brouchoud:
So I’ll pause that there, but also just want to emphasize that, you know, during the recording playback as the learner, I can position myself anywhere I want. So I’m not, it’s not like you’re stuck watching a video, you know, it’s a three-dimensional holographic demonstration. So if I want to watch this from the perspective of Dr. Slamon, I can actually stand right behind him and watch this, this lecture played back.

Dr. Nick Slamon:
They will see the heart’s electrical activity, both coming towards the sticker set.

Jon Brouchoud:
And that doesn’t matter as much when he’s just speaking about what an EKG is, but once he starts doing his demonstration, I always think it’s interesting. A little creepy at first, but you can actually stand right here and just watch. And if you’re in VR mode, it’s almost like your hands are there. You can watch his hands do the demonstration. And I think there’s certain types of skills that that’s very beneficial to be able to stand in that position. And you’re actually watching a very skilled pediatric intensivist that’s going to be doing this procedure right in front of you. And you’re actually able to watch their hands and do all of the skills right in front of you. So it’s a very interesting way. And again, these avatars are very minimalistic on purpose. They take a little getting used to. They’re these kind of blue ghosted avatars. You know, we had more realistic avatars at one point, and every simulation becomes a big distraction in terms of people trying to figure out, you know, what they want their avatar to look like and customizing the look of it. And there’s a place for that, but most of the time, most of the schools gave us feedback that they just want the students to focus on the learning objectives and to focus on the simulation and the objectives rather than you know, what their avatar looks like. And in this case, when you’re watching Dr. Slamon, you know, I think you have a pretty good sense of, you know, his gestures and his movement, and you can certainly see how he’s doing this skill very clearly. So we’ll just watch a few more seconds here.

Dr. Nick Slamon:
And going away from them to create a 3D model of the electrical automaticity and throughput of the heart. And that usually will be resulted in the classic EKG pattern that we have up on the wall with the depolarization of the atria causing the P wave, the QRS complex, the sharp needle-like up and down of the ventricular…

Jon Brouchoud:
So as soon as he finishes this, he’s going to start doing the actual demonstration and then you can reset it and then the learner can do it themselves. So I can actually click these stickers and place them ahead of time. I’m kind of cheating because Dr. Slamon is going to be doing this eventually, but and then we can go ahead and put the stickers and I’m not doing this in the right order, but you get the idea. So even in non-VR mode, I can actually complete this activity. And again, if that objectives panel is up, I can actually see what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. So you can really prepare for real-world simulations or real-world EKG. So that is the 3D recording feature. The last thing I’ll mention is the profile picture. So you can see Dr. Slamon’s real-world thumbnail. So just like using, you know, Facebook or Twitter or anything else, you just have your own thumbnail photo. So you get a sense of who the person is and then the avatar is just there to represent what they’re doing. And again, Acadicus comes with these simulations that have 3D recordings, but it’s very easy and accessible for any of your instructors. If you don’t like the way that this is taught or you want to take it a different direction, your own instructors can very easily put on the headset and create their own demonstration of it. and just follow along, do the demonstration, record it into a Holocron, and make that available to your students. And again, the nice thing about that is it’s non-live facilitated, so you can do that asynchronously. You can just set up a lab in solo mode, if you’d like, and have all the students going in and doing these activities and skills without having to have any facilitator necessarily present. So that is the 3D recording feature.

Bill Ballo:
That’s one of the things that we used it for a little bit with respiratory therapy, where the respiratory therapy students could come in, they could go in headset, they can watch this 3D recording, they can be involved really in the 3D recording. And they can now see exactly what the instructor is doing from any angle that they choose. And I think that’s a really powerful feature. The other thing that I do, like when I’m making 3D recordings, I make 3D recordings and I also turn them into 2D recordings. So that way I have both. And what I do is I start out by just taking in Acadicam and placing the Acadicam in there, getting it where I want it, getting it where the view is going to be. And then I use the Acadicam as my prompt for where the student’s going to be. That way, I have like a reference point. And I think, Jon, when we were doing them early on, you had actually placed like a construction worker in there. So I had somebody to direct my instruction to. But, but then, so I have that, Acadicam in there. And what I do is I simultaneously just record my screen with a very simple screen recorder. You can get free screen recorders anywhere. I mean, they’re all over the place. Um, and so I just, I just put that screen recorder on. I let it record while I’m going through my 3D, you know, recording flubs and all, you know, some of them, I want to be a little bit more polished. And so then I’ll take those out and I’ll, I’ll edit those out for, for video purposes. Um, but then it gives me both formats. So now if I have to use that format, let’s say we’re using in a really big, like 30 person lecture or something like that, or it’s something that’s like, I teach asynchronous. I teach a, uh, or I used to teach an asynchronous, um, operations course. And so if I want that to be part of my operations course, I can do that. And then when it comes to doing more skills-based stuff or when it comes to doing even some patient interaction, that kind of stuff, then I have the students come in, they put the headset on for that instead of, you know, I looked at it early on as a lecture tool. I didn’t even necessarily look at it early on as a simulation tool. I mean, I did, but like for me, it was more of a lecture tool. It was more of a way to say, you know, this is the heart and these are the valves and see how this valve opens and closes and see how when the atria contract and the ventricles are open, how the valves work, right? So I used it more for that in the early days and, you know, doing a simple screen recording and having that there. with you. And then if you want to make it a little bit more interesting, right? So now you can go back in, in viewer mode, like I’ve done, and then you can change the position of where you’re watching it from. So now go, you know, instead of watching it from this now turning, watch it from over here and then let it play screen, record it. Right. And then you can do it again. You could do it multiple times. And if you like doing editing, you can edit it all together. If you don’t, you know, you don’t have to. So, um, Dr. Sabella, our veterinarian here at Madison College, he did a great one. He did the lecture. He was standing in here, and his students were sitting in our debrief area, and he was lecturing to them. using the, the, uh, the cow, you know, anatomy and all that kind of stuff. And it was on the 85 inch screen. So everybody could see it. Then he had his students go in afterwards. But what we also did was we just hit record on it. I recorded it and I even 2D screen recorded it. Like, so you can do all of that. at once, it takes a little bit of like knowledge, but it’s really not that that difficult. It’s really not that tough. And then you have that 3D recording living in there forever. And now anytime anybody comes in and asks about that tech, I just go, I don’t listen to me. Listen to Dr. Sabella. Then I put him in there and I hit the recording and I let Dr. Sabella tell them all about VR and how he uses it for veterinary anatomy.

Jon Brouchoud:
That’s awesome. Yeah, there’s like a spectrum of access, you know, where, you know, you’ve got that deeply immersive, you know, put on the VR headset, you’re live together with your instructor, that’s going to be the highest bandwidth, highest fidelity experience you’re going to have, you know, in a virtual environment. But then from there, you’ve got that ability to create the 3D recording, have the students go into VR mode, and they feel like they’re in there watching it. But like you say, you can also capture that as a two-dimensional thing that you’re putting up on, you know, you could put that in your LMS, you could put that on YouTube, you know. many cases, a lot of the simulations that we’ve created in collaboration with our SMEs, you know, we have those available in Acadicus and they get viewed all the time. You know, we see that there’s a lot of use with those, but then we also put them on our YouTube channel and I can see that some of those have thousands and thousands of views and they’re watched, you know, all the time and you can actually see the statistics on YouTube in terms of where the falloff happens and people are watching those all the way to the end, you know, they’re, they’re engaged and they’re, they’re watching those simulations and they’re very accessible. You can do it from a mobile phone. You can do it from any location. You don’t have to have a headset. You don’t have to spend any money at all. You know, it’s a very accessible way, but it’s the least immersive, but you know, it’s a trade off. So you’re getting, you know, the best of all worlds in that case. And maybe that’s the entry point, you know, the sort of gateway is you watch one of those videos and you’re like, well, how is that done? Like, what is that avatar? How does that work? You do a little exploration, you get access to a headset, you put the headset on and now you’re fully immersed. It might be a way to get you to try that out and actually go into the experience. And it’s also an accessibility option as well. Just having a very easy access way to be able to get into those simulations. So you’ve got kind of, like I always say, belt and suspenders. You’ve got a lot of different options to reinforce those simulations.

Bill Ballo:
It’s a really good way to, to show usage. You know, if you’re, if you’ve purchased this and you’re trying to, you know, show, you know, you’re looking at next year and what you’re going to be doing for next year. And, and you’re trying to figure out a way to show, Hey, this is how we’re using it. Or you got a grant, right. And this is how we’re using it. And this is what we’re doing. A 2D recording like that, you know, doing your 3D recording, that is absolutely the best way to have your students experience it. But then taking that, creating that 2D recording, and now you can send it to, you know, you can send it to your provost, you can send it to the president of the college, you can send it to other people that you’re like, hey, I need more people, you know, coming on board. Right. So that was one of the things that we did was I wanted more people coming on board and doing VR. A lot of them were thinking of it in the medical sense. And I’m like, well, hold on, because we’ve got an HVAC simulator that we built. Let me show you, you know, me being goofy, trying to figure out how to work an HVAC simulator, you know, and then failing miserably at it. And the instructor going, well, Bill, if you had only done this, this and this, I’m like, well, see, I need you to get in there and teach me. But that’s sort of the that’s another way to to. To get more people on board to get more people interested and then to get your management to go, Oh yeah. Okay. I see why we’re, you know, we’re using it the way we’re using it. You know, you can have the old, where you stand in there with the rubber heart or the plastic heart and you’re gone. Okay. See now, if I could make this plastic heart beat, then I would show you that, or you can. You can have the heart beating and you can do something really cool, like pulling it out of the chest of the of the mannequin that you have it. And if you see my YouTube channel, same thing. And I was like, here I am pulling this out of the chest and then putting it in front of people. And they’re like, whoa. So, you know, you can have that or or you can, you know, you can also do it where you’re standing there with your PowerPoint and going through your PowerPoint and on your PowerPoint slide. It’s got a heart with little arrows telling you which way things go. I mean, it’s up to you. I just think that it’s way more interactive and my students have certainly enjoyed it more.

Jon Brouchoud:
Absolutely. And there’s kind of a fun side of it that is not, you know, education or serious in a lot of ways. But, you know, I think we’ve both probably had our kids go into 3D recordings and, you know, there’s something pretty interesting about going back and watching it because this feature has been in there for over five years, you know, it’s been there for a while. So I’ve got recordings, 3D recordings. you know, of my son in there from, you know, five years ago, you know, it is just completely different person, you know, and at the time, you know, one of the 3D recordings, he had a real bad cold and you can hear the congestion, you know, and it’s just, but you’re just goofing around and building things and having fun, you know, that’s not a serious application of it, but it’s kind of an interesting way to sort of archive, you know, it’s different than a video, it’s different than a photo. It’s like you’re capturing them moving around and doing things and there’s nothing quite like that. That’s kind of an interesting thing. But even from an education perspective, being able to record, one of the things you can actually do is record, with the proper permissions, you actually record your students doing a simulation. And I always call that immersive debriefing. So You know, you see that all the time in simulation centers where there’s all of the fancy AV equipment. Well, you can just put in Acadicam in a simulation and hit record and capture a 3D recording of the student doing a demonstration or a skill, and then be able to watch that played back and point things out to give constructive feedback on how they can do it better next time.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah. I’ve even, I’ve even used that for demo purposes. Um, because our students do sign a release for recording. Um, and I’ve used it for demo purposes because I’ve had nursing faculty come in and go, okay, wait. So I don’t necessarily understand. I mean, we’re standing there together. I’m in VR with them and going, okay, let’s work on this patient. And they’re still kind of going. Okay, wait, so you’re seeing everything I’m seeing, you’re doing the same stuff. Like, I’m just in this room with you. And then I go, hold on, wait a minute. And I find the 3D recording of the three nursing students working in there, and talking to the patient, and I’m the patient at the time. And and I go here, just watch this. And I hit the recording. And there’s three nursing students, and they’re talking to a patient, the patient’s talking back, And I even have one of the nursing instructors go, wait, are you doing that right now? Like, are you talking right now? I’m like, no, no, no, I’m not talking right now. That’s the recording. I’m speaking for the patient. I was the operator and they’re. Oh, I get it. You know, and they kind of watch what’s going on and then they get a better idea of like their, they’re really interacting in this room with this patient.

Jon Brouchoud:
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s why I thought it was worth going over the 3D recording feature again, because we still, even people that have a license to Acadicus and they’re using it on a daily basis, even they have questions about it in terms of, again, just recently I was talking to one of our customers and they said, they asked, you know, If I create a 3D recording, is it recording from my perspective what I see? They think of it like you’re holding a camera. And it’s like, no, it’s capturing your position in three-dimensional space. And so when it’s played back, you’re not in that, in those eyes, you’re looking at it from a third person perspective, just like we watched Dr. Slamon just now, you’re watching a fully, you know, three dimensional experience. It’s not something that’s locked in, you have agency to move around and look at it from any angle. So it’s very different than a traditional recording, but people have a very difficult time understanding that because it’s largely unprecedented. In a traditional Sim Lab AV system, you’re really a passive observer watching in a static position. And this way, it’s almost like you’re there. Every time I watch these 3D recordings, you feel like you’re right there in the room with the person. And it’s pretty, pretty incredible to be able to do that and see it from any angle. And you can watch it over and over again, and then you get the chance to do it yourself. So it’s very much unlike any other technology that’s out there.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, yeah, agreed. Agreed. And it just, it, you know, it makes it really powerful. It makes it really, it increases the interest, you know, it just, I mean, I’m always looking for new ways to to to get my students more engaged with things that I’m using. And and, you know, even if you think, oh, I don’t know, it’s just a recording. Believe me, it’s way more than that. It’s way more than that, because, you know, again, you want to increase engagement. That’s a great way to do it. You can also another thing I’ve done because, you know, I flub a lot is I’ll put a uh, like a, like a script, like a small script or, or something like that in there. Um, and then make it invisible, then just take it out so that it’s invisible. It’s visible to me when I first was in there using it. And then I just make it invisible and then people can’t see it. Um, that’s really, really helpful. That’s really helpful. You can even, you know, kind of put slides in there too, so that you can go through a slide show that way. I mean, What a, what a better way of going through a slideshow if that’s what you’re going to do and go through the slides. What a better way of doing it. So, I remember when we were first recording, Jon, we were recording dynamic cardiology. And I was down on the floor and I was doing CPR on the mannequin. And all of a sudden we hear meow. And it was my cat coming to say hello. Like, well, you’re down on the floor. You might as well be petting a cat.

Jon Brouchoud:
You know, I still have those 3D recordings every once in a while. I see those. If you’re trying to you’re really trying to get that done, you know, and then we’re going to start over again. That’s pretty funny. Well, you know, and there’s, you know, because it’s a tool set that you have access to as an Acadicus customer, you can sort of just do whatever you want with that tool, you know, and we’ve got ways that we’re demonstrating how it’s used, but we’ve seen schools that are using it for multiple choice questions where they’ll have, you know, here’s, here’s the question, and then here’s three possible answers. And instead of just having a checkbox, it’s actually a 3D recording for each answer. So you press play and say, well, this is the one I think is the right answer. And then a 3D recording appears and says, well, actually, that wasn’t the right choice. And here’s why. Try again. And you press the next one. No, that’s not the right choice. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen. But you eventually get to, that’s the correct answer. And then move on to the next one. So you can use 3D recordings as this way of articulating and explaining whether you’ve got an answer right or wrong. And there’s all kinds of things. You can record 3D recordings from within 3D recordings. You can watch 3D recordings from within. So there’s really complex things you can do that are multiple layers deep as you get into the tool set. But it’s very powerful. And the farther customers get into understanding it, the more innovative uses we’re seeing with that tool. And I think that’s pretty cool.

Bill Ballo:
It’s really easy to use. If you know how to push a record button, you’re going to be fine.

Jon Brouchoud:
That’s really all there is to it. I mean, there’s some nuances in terms of like, where do you want the student to be positioned and whatnot. But other than that, it’s literally a record button you press, you know, record. So it’s pretty straightforward. And we’re happy to help anytime if anybody wants to create 3D recordings. And Frank Emanuel from Cochise College completed a series of recordings on the immune system that we’re going to be sharing soon. So it’s really cool. He did like an immersive magic school bus experience where you’re inside the blood vessel and he created 3D recordings of different bacteria and what do they do and what happens if there’s an infection and what a cool way to do that like why not teach that from within a blood cell as a VR avatar you know and I don’t think I ever would have thought about that but he created that he sponsored development of a bunch of content and and those that’ll be available he’s been very generous in sharing that with our community so we’ll be making those available that’s awesome that’s awesome

Bill Ballo:
That helps me, too, now, because I have microbiome people that were interested. And I’m like, yeah, we’ve got microbiology in here. And I’m like, I don’t know what this is. They’re like, oh, that’s coronavirus. I’m like, ah, OK, we’ll just put that over there. So I actually have my daughter in the other day. She was she and she’s the voice of the pain, pediatric pain scenario. But she she was in the headset and she was just playing around with like the anatomy and stuff like that and asking questions. And the bio people were here. Um, and she just, you know, she was my presenter and she was asking questions to them and, Oh, what is this? What’s that muscle? And, you know, and they’re out there, they’re out there teaching a class. So it was cool. It was really, really cool.

Jon Brouchoud:
That’s awesome. Very cool. Well, I guess that covers the 3D recording feature pretty well. You know, given the busy time of year, we could cut this one short. If any, unless there’s anything else we should cover that we haven’t covered yet.

Bill Ballo:
Yeah, I have some people from meteorology coming in. So that’ll be, uh, that that’s, I was going to have to leave a little early today anyway. Um, so meteorology and biotechnology are our two new ones that, uh, that are starting conversations with us. So very cool.

Jon Brouchoud:
That’s very cool. Expand expanding. Yes.

Bill Ballo:
Go to other places, find other, other departments that, uh, that would be interested and you can get them into VR.

Jon Brouchoud:
can liberate simulation beyond the walls of the Sim Lab. There’s almost anything you can imagine at this point. So pretty exciting opportunities. Cool. Well, good luck with those demos and have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks for joining us.

Bill Ballo:
Take care, everybody.