Designing Virtual Agents for Simulation-Based Learning in Virtual Reality

In this chapter, the authors review and explore propositions, approaches, and core elements of designing virtual agents that contextualize and scaffold simulation-based learning. They start the chapter by reviewing the literature and prior research on the nature, role, design claims, and evidence of virtual agents in digital and multimedia learning environments. They then analyze the educational affordances of virtual reality (VR) for agent-supported, simulation-based learning as well as the design challenges for creating interactive virtual agents. Through an empirical design case, they describe a conceptual and design framework of creating and using virtual agents for VR simulation-based teaching training. Specifically, they provide an analytical and contextualized synthesis of core design elements, including specific design problems associated with virtual agents, the design solutions, and the patterns of transferring or scaling these design solutions to other cases of virtual agent development.