PIVOTE - PREVIEW Immersive Virtual Training Environment

PIVOTE is a virtual learning authoring system for virtual worlds. It was developed as part of the JISC funded PREVIEW project, where it was used to develop training material for Paramedic students at St George's Hospital and Kingston University. Although based on the Medbiquitous Virtual Patient standard the feeling of all involved in the project was that the system could be used for any sort of structured learning in virtual worlds. The result was that JISC have funded the creation of PIVOTE - this open source project.

The key point about PIVOTE is that all the structure and information content of an exercise is stored on the web, not in the virtual world. This means that it is easy to create, and then edit and maintain, courseware INDEPENDENT OF VIRTUAL WORLD. And since even structure and content are separate you can have the same exercise but with different levels of student information - from loads of help and structure for beginners, to minimal information and structure for assessment purposes.

From here you can download all the code you need to use PIVOTE to run your own courses in virtual worlds. From our location in Second Life you can download a starter set of objects, and the Controller, and you can of course create (and hopefully share) your own. PIVOTE supports users in Second Life (and OpenSim) and on the Web, but it is possible to create controllers for other virtual worlds - why not do it yourself or add it to our wish-list (see Issues).

Whilst developed initially for training medical professionals in Higher Education, we believe that PIVOTE could become a valuable too for anyone delivering training or education in any topic in a virtual world.

Go on, get involved.

Watch an introductory video

Read the Documentation

Read the Quick Start Guide and get started

Visit the PIVOTE web site.

Join the PIVOTE discussion group.

Subscribe to the PIVOTE mailing list.