OREANDA-NEWS. September 05, 2016. Dr. Randolph Steadman, a UCLA anesthesiologist and medical director of the UCLA Simulation Center, has received a grant from Department of Defense to continue innovative research being conducted in collaboration with the departments of surgery and anesthesiology the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, the Center for Research on Educational Standards and Student Testing and the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

In 1996, Steadman founded the Simulation Center – the first in Southern California – to help health care trainees refine their clinical decision-making and teamwork skills before progressing to treat patients. The center has since expanded to a 9,000-square-foot facility open to medical students, residents and fellows from 10 departments throughout the medical school, as well as to dental school residents and nursing students.

"Our aim is to build a screen-based simulation for team training and assessment that compares immersive participation (game-play mode) with non-interactive observation (evaluation mode),” said Dr. Steadman. “To accomplish this, we will create scenario scripts and interactive affordances within an online game. In the background, a domain ontology and automated assessment engine will make inferences about the player's ability to identify and apply core teamwork skills.”