Abstract—This paper presents the development of a Component-Based System structured as a distributed threetier architecture, enabling monitoring and information visualisation of application activity as well as presentation of feedback to learners via a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) in the virtual world of Second Life®. The activities follow a gamebased learning approach and take place in a Respiratory Ward in Second Life®, where learners interact with virtual patients receiving intrinsic feedback about their diagnosis, investigations and treatments. The proposed architecture developed by the authors, consists of different virtual patient components that provide the relevant personal and clinical data to the clinical scenario; a data availability model that enables the sequencing and progressive disclosure of a virtual patient identifying triggers and scaffolding information, and an activity model which encodes the activities available and how the learner will be able to engage with the virtual patients.

Index Terms—component-based system, three-tier architecture, second life®, virtual world, virtual patients  

Cite: Maria Toro-Troconis, Ashwin Kamat, and Martyn R Partridge, "Design and Development of a Component-Based System for Virtual Patients in the Virtual World of Second Life®," Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 308-316, November 2011. doi:10.4304/jetwi.3.4.308-316