Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 27, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 28, 2019 - Apr 3, 2019
Date Accepted: Jun 18, 2019
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 16, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Bodylight.js – toolchain for authoring in-browser simulators
ABSTRACT
Background:
Simulators for use in teaching are interactive applications composed of a mathematical model of the system under study and a graphical user interface that allows the user to control the model inputs and visualize the model results in an intuitive and educational way. Well-designed simulators promote active learning, enhance problem-solving skills, and encourage collaboration and small group discussion. However, creating simulators for teaching purposes is a challenging process that requires many contributors including educators, modelers, graphic designers and programmers. The availability of a toolchain of user-friendly software tools for building simulators can facilitate this complex task.
Objective:
The purpose of this work is to develop an open source toolchain of software tools termed Bodylight.js that will facilitate the creation of browser-based, client-side simulators for teaching purposes which are platform independent, do not require any installation, and can work offline. The toolchain interconnects state-of-the-art modeling tools with current web technologies and is designed to be resilient to future changes in the software ecosystem.
Methods:
We utilized several open source web technologies, namely WebAssembly and JavaScript, combined with the power of the Modelica modelling language and deployed them on the web with interactive animations built with Adobe Animate.
Results:
Models are implemented in Modelica language using either OpenModelica or Dymola and exported to a standardised Functional Mock-up Unit (FMU) to ensure future compatibility. The C code from the FMU is further compiled to WebAssembly using Emscripten. Industry standard Adobe Animate is used to create interactive animations. A new tool called Bodylight.js Composer was developed for the toolchain that enables one to create the final simulator by composing the graphical user interface using animations, plots and control elements in a drag-and-drop style, and bind them to the model variables. The resulting simulators are standalone HTML files including Javascript and WebAssembly. Several simulators for use in physiology education were created using the Bodylight.js toolchain and have been received with general acclaim by teachers and students alike, thus validating our approach. One of simulators, the Nephron simulator, is presented in this paper. Bodylight.js is licensed under GPL 3.0 and is free for anyone to use.
Conclusions:
Bodylight.js enabled us to effectively develop teaching simulators. Armed with this technology we intend to focus on the development of new simulators and interactive textbooks for educating medical students. Bodylight.js usage is not constrained to developing simulators for teaching physiology and can facilitate development of simulators for teaching complex topics in a variety of different fields.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.