It is difficult for clinicians to become proficient diagnosing and treating unusual medical problems that are rarely encountered. Journal articles and medical cases can introduce facts and concepts. However, because they are non-interactive, they do not provide practice opportunities, assess student performance, or provide instructional feedback students need for application-level learning. Seminars with instructor-led discussions provide interactive learning experiences, but they require students to set aside blocks of free time to attend, and they are available only at certain times and locations.

To make interactive, scenario-based, medical training available anytime and anywhere, Stottler Henke developed METTLE, an authorable and extensible framework that makes it easy to create and deliver richly interactive scenarios over the web. During the scenario, a student can interact with simulated characters using language, forms, interactive images and diagrams, audio, and other media. Intelligent tutoring capabilities monitor and assess the student's actions and communications to identify contextually appropriate coaching and instruction feedback to present to the student.

• Video demo: WMV (36 MB)
• Screens: main screen    chart    exam
• Overview
• Slides from MMVR 2008 (Medicine Meets Virtual Reality)