Harnessing digital technologies in simulation-based learning for the development of clinical skills in psychology students

The transition from theory to practice is critical in psychology education, particularly in high-stakes areas such as suicide risk assessment. To facilitate skill development in psychology students prior to working directly with clients, educators use simulation-based learning (SBL) approaches like peer role-play and standardised simulated patients played by actors. However, these approaches can lack fidelity with real clients, are costly, and lack scalability and sustainability. This cutting-edge program of research employs digital technologies, such as natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR), to develop virtual clients that students can practice their clinical skills with prior to interacting with clients.

In 2026, our team will build on a promising and successful pilot that was undertaken in 2025, which showed that repeat suicide risk assessment practice with a chatbot resulted in significantly improved student self-efficacy in suicide risk assessment.

Two students are invited to contribute to this project and thereby help to bridge the gap between student attainment of knowledge and translating that knowledge to competent clinical practice.

Method/Approach

Experimental and quasi-experimental methods that draw on field and end-user experience and expertise are employed to explore the acceptability, usability, efficacy and effectiveness of digital simulation based learning for the development of clinical skills in psychology students.

Team and collaborators

HBMRC team

• Dr Elizabeth Pizzaro (project lead)
• Prof John Gleeson
• Dr Tom McGuckian

Collaborators

• Dr Simon D'Alfonso (University of Melbourne)
• Assoc Prof Jonathan Duckworth (RMIT University)

Students

• Cassandra Mount (MPsych Clinical)
• Hannah Giddy (Hons)

Funding and support

• Teaching and Development Grant, Centre of Education and Innovation, Australian Catholic University: AI in Psychology Education. AUD$12,000, September 2025
• This project is led by Dr Pizarro-Campagna and is in collaboration with Prof John Gleeson, Dr Simon D'Alfonso, and Dr Tom McGuckian. This project will 1) develop and validate natural language processing (NLP) models capable of automatically evaluating person-centred counselling and risk-assessment skills competence demonstrated during student-conducted risk assessment sessions; 2) create a labelled dataset of student-chatbot therapy session transcripts scored by expert human raters using standardised tools, which will serve as a ground truth for training and testing NLP models; and 3) explore and compare various NLP techniques for their effectiveness in predicting expert rating scores and providing automated feedback.
• Our team was also recently awarded AU$49,962 in September 2025 by the Telematics Trust Supporting Education Through Innovative Technology Grant for our project entitled, VR Simulation for Psychology Training (VR-SimPT). This project is led by Dr Pizarro-Campagna and is in collaboration with Prof John Gleeson, Assoc Prof Jonathan Duckworth, and Dr Tom McGuckian. This project harnesses immersive VR technology to transform SBL in psychology training, enabling psychology students to experience simulated clients with greater fidelity and interactivity, while being more affordable, scalable, and sustainable. The VR-SimPT tool will be a major improvement on current approaches for acquiring clinical psychology skills. It will enable students to be immersed in and practice with difficult, high risk, or rare clinical presentations that are otherwise challenging or costly to simulate with fidelity.

Contact

Phone: +61 03 9953 3110

Email: elizabeth.pizarro@acu.edu.au