Infomedia students contribute to new e-learning platform
Students at Infomedia are central in designing an e-learning platform along with professor Signe Hjelen Stige at the University of Bergen's Faculty of Psychology.
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Professor Stige works to realize a software for video simulations of patient dialogue that lets psychology students rehearse spontaneous, emotionally realistic consultations. The technology is still under development, and the Infomedia students worked a prototype they called praXis.
Lack of realism in current training
The psychology students should feel confident when they meet real patients 鈥� both during internships as part of clinical training and after they have completed their education. It is, however, difficult to provide realistic learning opportunities for students that do not involve real clients. Classroom role-play is the most common solution, but this approach is not very realistic, difficult to tailor and standardize, and also hard to grade.
How can the psychology education better reflect the reality that students will encounter as professionals?
This is a problem that clinical psychologist Professor Signe Hjelen Stige has long wanted to solve. She envisions a software similar to Mitt UiB or It's Learning that is tailor-made for dialogic training for psychologists. In 2024 she worked with senior adviser at UiB Learning Lab Frode Ims to prepare the project.
- We made a number of training videos that can help students engage with realistic patient cases, says Signe.
- But we also needed a software that can help the student to interact with the cases 鈥� also outside of class. We had no technical skills or funds to create it. We are educators, researchers, and TV producers, not program developers and interaction designers. So we were very happy when we learnt about the possibilities at the Media and interaction design program.
Collaboration with media and interaction design
The praXis software was developed as the final year bachelor project at media and interaction-design (MIX) by students Eirik Pagani Vavik, Michela Wilhelmsen, Arne Bjelde Hustveit, Ole G氓sv忙r and Isak Dammen. The course is called MIX250 "Bachelor thesis in media and interaction design".
Course leader Lars Nyre explains how the course works.
- Each year we have a different theme. In the spring of 2025, we focused on web design. The student groups were tasked with creating websites for organizations in and around the University of Bergen. The goal was to show clients how valuable help they can get from students to increase the value of their services.
- The praXis group clearly showed that a student group working on interaction design and innovation can create real value for a partner, says Lars Nyre.
The team followed an agile development process from January until June 2025. The group decided their own design methods freely, and transformed months of research, prototyping, and user testing into a high-fidelity prototype of an e-learning platform. It was presented at the Infomedia Innovation Day in May and can also be explored at .
Practice like it鈥檚 real
PraXis is built around a simple promise: give every (psychology) student a chance to face a 鈥減atient鈥� that feels real, without demanding supervisor hours. The platform offers a video-based environment where students engage with lifelike patient simulations through pre-recorded, scenario-based interactions.
Educators can create and adapt modules to align with specific curriculum goals, enabling students to rehearse realistic clinical scenarios independently, using their own devices. Students respond verbally, either immediately or through structured practice tasks. Unlike static case studies, praXis emphasizes dynamic, clinically relevant interaction.
Each video answer is also stored automatically, creating a permanent record for self-reflection and a fair, standardized basis for tutor feedback 鈥� something informal classroom role-plays can never provide.
A flexible and scalable model
PraXis hands lecturers a studio-grade canvas where they can assemble teaching moments much like therapists assemble interventions: choose a task type, tweak its timers, feedback depth and scoring rules, stitch it into a narrative, then press publish and watch it appear on every student dashboard.
Because praXis runs as a cloud subscription, a module can scale from a 20-seat elective to a full cohort overnight, or even jump across departmental borders to medicine, nursing or social work with nothing more than new video cases.
By combining clinical realism, objective feedback loops and effortless scalability, praXis offers the Faculty of Psychology a concrete way to safeguard training quality even as its human resources shrink.
Built with and for the user
User feedback was gathered in iterative cycles that included insights from psychology students and lecturers. This resulted in three main focus points for design and functionality for the system:
- Deliberate practice, which provides structured, goal-oriented rehearsal that breaks down complex skills, emphasizes focused repetition, and delivers timely feedback from teachers or recorded sessions.
- Observational learning, which systematically studies therapist鈥損atient interactions so students can internalize models of exemplary practice.
- Immediate response, which relies on real-time reactions to stimuli or peer interactions to foster engagement and reinforce learning through instant feedback.
These three modalities translated into two non-negotiable requirements for the prototype:
- Authoring capability: Teachers must be able to create highly configurable learning modules, each tailored to one, and only one of the above three pedagogical modalities.
- Interaction support: Students must have a way to interact with these modules in a manner that supports the functions, interactivity, and structures appropriate to their designated pedagogical modality.
An ongoing project
praXis is an ongoing project with a need for further development and testing.
An extensive video library has already been developed by professor Signe Hjelen Stige and senior adviser at UiB Learning Lab Frode Ims. Stige has expressed a clear interest in testing the solution in a pilot class within a safe and pedagogically sound framework.
The team is currently exploring how the platform can be most effectively integrated into psychology education. To realize the pilot the prototype must be technically integrated with Feide login and protect personal data in accordance with UiB's guidelines and SIKT. There is also a need to clarify the responsibility for operation, licensing and budget approval in cooperation with administrative bodies at the UiB.