What is the NMU Speech-Language & Hearing Virtual Clinic?

The virtual clinic building is a near exact replica of the actual Speech & Language Department at Northern Michigan University, located in Marquette, Michigan. The photoreal environment uses textures in a way that showcases the potential of the Second Life graphics engine. At the time of this recording, Second Life does not support realistic lighting. However, with clever texturing, the lighting in this clinic lobby looks quite accurate.

The virtual clinic also serves as a promotional tool for the department, allowing potential students and patients to get a feel for the program without having to leave their home. Currently, there is: the clinic lobby, a classroom for students to view class-oriented slides and hold discussions, an audiology suite, a theater for viewing clinical videos via streaming from sources such as YouTube, an informal interview room with attached daily living workstation, and a materials and storage room. This room will eventually contain special objects that avatars can take for clinical use with artificial intelligences, also known as bots, that will be put in each of the currently empty patient treatment rooms. This will allow current students to practice with expensive equipment or techniques in the virtual world first, minimizing the chance of a costly mistake in a real world trial. Best of all, new interactive content is always being added, creating an incentive for participants to return to the virtual clinic. As an example: the voice lab is nearly complete.

This life-like replica also allows the students in particular to enter Virtual Reality through an environment that they are familiar with. The realism facilitates a faster method of learning how to navigate and interact within the virtual world of Second Life. Realism also allows the students to take the technology seriously, an attitude they may not have if their first virtual experience is too alien or aloof for them. Once students have accepted the potential of the medium, they can begin to appreciate the more fantastical elements of virtual reality.