An embodied virtual communication system has been developed that places virtual student-nurse and patient in a virtual hospital room to support education in nursing communication. The effectiveness of this system is demonstrated here. In this system, virtual characters are controlled by the students. These characters, referred to as “avatars”, act according to their controllers' nonverbal behavior. Controllers can communicate remotely through the interaction of their avatars in the virtual environment. By using the developed system, a communication experiment was carried out with 10 nursing students divided into 5 pairs. The students in the pairs took turns playing the role of the patient and student-nurse. When compared with the real-life role-playing exercise, the virtual system was stated as positively evaluating attributes like “getting into character”, “interaction”, and “preference for the system” by the students. The comments by the students also demonstrate that the system is effective in providing the students with virtual experiences of patients and helping them get into character, which indicates the possible use of the system to support education in newer forms of nursing communication.

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[in Japanese]

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