Large‐scale integration of Virtual Reality‐Enriched Tasks (VRETs) in gross anatomy curriculum during the pandemic

Abstract

Anatomy has transformed from a standalone discipline to one of the fundamental pillars in an integrated medical curriculum. It is of paramount importance that anatomy is taught with an active learning approach coupled with essential clinical application to help students foster deeper understanding of the knowledge acquired. With the pilot study, VR-enriched tasks (VRETs) were written and they were positively received by the participants. Subsequently, VR technology was officially adopted as a technological learning tool in the gross anatomy curriculum. New VRETs were written to be more clinically oriented to gastrointestinal anatomy and were deployed in conjunction to dissection classes.

Face-to-face teaching was still permitted at the University of Hong Kong amid the pandemic, but precautionary measures were stringently observed. Number of students allowed inside the laboratory was limited to a quarter of the usual class size, which equated to about 65 students per session. Due to the nature of VR, students had to pair up where one would put on the VR googles to perform VRETs while the other one gave instructions. Thus, 35 sets of VR devices were deployed to accommodate this class size. Similar to the pilot study, students were given an introductory demonstration and some time to familiarise with the VR interface. This was due to previous feedback on the operational difficulty to novice users. Students were asked to complete two VRETs, with a debriefing session after each VRET. At the end of the class, students were invited to complete the same 7-point Likert scale questionnaire, which aimed to investigate active learning in a technology-enabled environment.

50 students returned a completed questionnaire and 43 reported to have no prior VR experience. 5 items received an average score over 4.5, in which students somewhat agreed that VRETs piqued their curiosity; provided extra support for learning anatomy; helped with deeper understanding of anatomy; motivated them to study and improved the learning experience. Findings were consistent with those from the pilot study. Students who had prior VR experience also scored the above 5 items higher than students without prior VR experience, showing that they generally enjoyed the session more and this was supported by written feedback that stated the steep learning curve for first-time users. VRETs were considered to be good supplement to dissection especially on visualising structures that might have been accidentally removed in dissection. In the contrary, students raised concerns on how they were not receiving timely feedback for their performance and this might explain the overall lower average scores across all items. This was because in the formal VR session the instructor to student group ratio was 1 to 20 whereas in the pilot study it was 1 to 5. In the subsequent sessions, number of teachers and teaching assistants would be increased to help improve the ratio so as to improve the feedback situation.

Due to the pandemic, some students attended the VR laboratory before and some after the equivalent dissection classes. Further studies would be conducted to explore the impact of the sequence of learning activity on students’ learning.