University of the Western Cape’s Health Professional Education Gets A Boost With VR
For a few years now, the university’s Faculty of Community Health Sciences (CHS) has been tapping into Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies to look at ways to improve student success by converting anatomy lectures into 3D objects that are easily accessible but also fun for students.
“Students just came out of high school to do anatomy and physiology because those are the cornerstones of health professional education for programmes such as physiotherapy, nursing, occupational therapy and all of these professions that we train,” explained Professor Simone Titus, a Learning and Teaching Specialist at CHS’s Interprofessional Education Unit (IPEU), who headed up the initiative.
“We found that they were struggling to grasp concepts and terminology regarding human biology, anatomy, physiology, the medical bio-sciences, etc.”
Prof Titus and her colleagues then realised there was much room available to to develop learning activities using educational technology such as virtual 3D worlds, and that the faculty could function better within these spaces in learning and teaching ways.
“I was thinking of innovative ways to teach anatomy and physiology to make it fun. We call it ‘edutainment’. And to make it understandable for students in an interactive way, in a manner that they can access the information seamlessly.”
Subsequently, the faculty partnered with Dr Omowunmi Isafiade from the Department of Computer Science, the EON Reality group as well as Mr Laurent de Laroche Souvestre who is a consultant, to develop their AR and VR platforms for teaching and learning purposes.
“It’s all about ensuring students have this multi-model approach to accessing content.”
Prof Titus successfully applied for a research grant from the National Research Foundation to look at the students’ perception of AR/VR in class using some of the assets they had built.
“Students had a positive reaction towards the initiative. However, they were quickly aware of some of the pitfalls.
“Students are interested in this type of technology, which is great. But they are also aware that if it is disconnected, they feel a lecture is needed. It is not only about implementing VR in class; it also ensures the lecturer is learning. We are also aware that physiologically, not all students can engage in VR. With technology, some people may feel dizzy, and being immersed in a virtual space may not be better for some students. In that case, we ensured that they are not always immersed in virtual reality but can access 3D assets on a desktop and can still manipulate the objects that are also in AR.”
The faculty is currently working with the JigSpace team to train staff to build context-specific VR/AR objects that can be used in class. The School of Nursing, for instance, built an emergency trolley that first- to fourth-year students use for their clinical work.
“That is a noble project, and the idea is to make sure that the knowledge relevant to using that particular emergency trolley is extended to other disciplines. We have moved from implementing anatomy lessons in some modules to getting staff to build their context-specific assets with the help of JigSpace.”
Prof Titus said there is a range of assets that staff are working on, based on a workshop held by the CHS Faculty and JigSpace, “which is novel because in social science it’s not easy to do AR and VR. We are moving in the right direction regarding implementing and using AR and VR in health professional education.”
Prof Titus encouraged staff to engage with the platform, and said the IPEU is constantly looking at education trends in education and technology.
“We are going to be moving to other spaces like extended reality. We must then also look at how AI will inform our practices as educators. There are many developments, and we need to start leveraging these technologies to enhance learning and teaching and to facilitate students’ success at UWC.”