Methods: A methodological study was conducted through three phases. The first process was developing a virtual simulation template based on the findings of literature review and focus interviews with clinical nurses and experts to identify essential components of characteristics of virtual simulation design. The second phase of the study was to build a sample of virtual simulation using the developed template. Testing the validity of the sample virtual simulation was the final development process.
Results: Effective virtual simulation template with design characteristics was developed. The developed template consisted of three domains, which were educational outlines, design characteristics of virtual simulation, and case presentation. The components of the design characteristics in the template were affordance, interaction between a computer and a participant, partipant representation, strategies for user interface design, the type of virtual simulation, simulation framework and the overall theoretical framework. The developed sample scenario was a pediatric case representing common pediatric patient situation using a platform in multi-user virtual environments. The sample of virtual simulation established its validity through expert content validity and face validity with clinical nurses.
Conclusions: Virtual simulation scenarios for nursing education should be developed based on the effective design characteristics of virtual simulation. The findings of this study showed the design characteristics of the developed template could allow nurse educators to build more structured virtual simulation strategies for nursing education. Further study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the virtual simulation is warranted.