About
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), situated on a large campus in Ewing Township, New Jersey, serves over 7,400 students across eight schools.TCNJ Nursing school have been working with Bodyswaps since 2023 to pilot and deploy our soft skills content to their students.
Simulation Coordinator Chelsea Lebo also consulted on our localization of popular module Navigating Angry Conversations.
Goals
- Provide structured, curriculum-aligned soft skills training
- Improve students’ communication skills, particularly in interprofessional and therapeutic contexts
- Build students’ confidence in conducting clinical conversations, reducing anxiety and feelings of awkwardness through repeated, psychologically safe practice
Deployment
Flexible sessions
Offering a mixture of in-person, VR-based sessions and the ability to download Bodyswaps on a personal device (mobile, tablet, etc.) allows for more flexibility and accessibility for students
Pathways for faculty buy-in
Chelsea used Bodyswaps’ learner pathway builder to create pathways targeted at particular educators’ objectives. This made deploying easier for instructors and allowed them to see the immediate relevancy of Bodyswaps
They're getting that personalized feedback [...] that's huge because while there's a time and a place for a traditional [in-person] simulation, they are always typically with a partner and in front of their peers.
When they’re doing this, it's really just them and they're able to see their strengths and weaknesses.
Chelsea Lebo
Simulation CoordinatorResults
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Advice
- Tie Bodyswaps and other new technologies to curriculum objectives to encourage uptake by educators and ingrain the learning for students
- Start small: get one course to embrace it successfully, and then build up semester by semester
- Seek out like-minded colleagues to share and discuss ideas with, having champions who will support the objectives of your deployment
I got to present about Bodyswaps this year at our instructional design conference, which was great because it not only allowed me to share about Bodyswaps as a great teaching tool, but also the point of how we can successfully integrate technology into higher ed and just be innovative.
Chelsea Lebo
Simulation CoordinatorFuture plans
Chelsea and the Simulation team are looking to encourage broader adoption of Bodyswaps across campus to explore the prospect of cross-faculty access.
Chelsea also hopes to introduce the new Job Interview AI roleplay to TCNJ’s career center to encourage its integration into career-readiness programs.
