Improving Motivation in a Haptic Teaching/Learning Framework

Virtual reality simulators represent an affordable alternative for teaching and learning specific skills in environments not available in reality for educational purposes. Their goal is to provide a simulated environment where students can practice real tasks in a safer way and with no real consequences in fields as engineering or surgery. For a simulator to become a more complete teaching and learning tool, it should also include the expert knowledge required to provide instant feedback to the user. SHULE is a framework for building haptic simulators to be used with educational purposes that includes expert knowledge. In order to increase users' motivation, we have also considered game features in the framework design, development and integration with other tools. This process includes the elements needed to provide a challenging goal for the simulator with the correct amount of uncertainty that would increase user's curiosity enough to keep on using it until certain skill is achieved. Simulators produced with SHULE can be integrated with a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle by means of web services. Their functionality offers the teacher the possibility to create new activities to be performed at the simulator, and also offers the students the possibility to see the results of their simulator sessions in the LMS.