BeLearn - VR in nursing education
The project used an immersive and interactive 360º video to investigate how VR can be used in nursing and medical informatics education.
Factsheet
- Schools involved School of Engineering and Computer Science
- Institute(s) Institut für Medizininformatik I4MI
- Research unit(s) I4MI / Digital Health Lab
- Funding organisation Others
- Duration (planned) 01.01.2025 - 31.01.2026
- Head of project Prof. Dr. Thomas Bürkle
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Partner
BeLEARN
Eidgenössische Hochschule für Berufsbildung EHB
Situation
The project “Virtual reality in nursing and medical informatics education” will examine the obstacles and requirements which still exist to implement VR tools in real life education and will exemplarily demonstrate an implementation in 2 different fields, medical informatics and nursing. The first aim is to develop two different teaching units a) for nurses and b) for medical informatics students based on the same VR-tool. The second aim of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness of the VR-based teaching unit.
Course of action
The first objective of the project was to develop two different teaching units a) for nurses and b) for medical informatics bachelor students based on the same VR-tool collaborating with experts from the practice in nursing and medical informatics education. The second aim of the project was to evaluate the effectiveness of the VR-based teaching unit. In nursing, the teaching units focused on the topic of patient data protection and patient security during digital information transmission. In medical informatics, the teaching unit focused on the topic of IT system usability and the design of different interfaces for the digital patient curve and order entry.
Result
In nursing, the results of the research show that immediately after watching the video and also six weeks later, the students of both groups had gained increased knowledge on the subject of patient data protection and patient security and were more attuned to the issue. The students who wore a VR headset reported increased motivation levels when learning and deeper immersion in the situation than the students who watched the video on a computer screen. The increased sense of presence in the group wearing a VR headset had an indirect positive effect on knowledge acquisition via learning motivation. The medical informatics student group was small. No statistically significant increase in knowledge could be measured although 4 out of 5 knowledge questions had positive mean increase in the intervention group. In this group there was a significant gain in ease of use and confidence to use 360º videos. Furthermore, those students who used the video with VR headset reported a stronger feeling of immersion and found the active points useful for learning.
Looking ahead
Overall, the project itself can be considered a translation into educational practice as we developed and implemented a teaching unit in practice with a 360-degree video and inspired teachers how to use these kinds of videos in their own lessons. In addition, the project was presented to VET professionals, policymakers, and stakeholders.
