Abstract:

Clinical skills labs exist in many Universities and University Hospitals, having a high maintenance cost and not always offering to the medical and nursing students a fully immersive experience. In recent years there has been an expansion of ICT in healthcare education, and a number of online resources in the form of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs), Virtual Patients (VPs) and other on-screen computer or mobile simulation tools have been created with positive acceptance by the students. However, current efforts, look to provide a cost effective and immersive clinical skills learning experience. Furthermore, Virtual Reality (VR) has existed for many years, but it is only lately that the new generation smartphones make VR accessible to a wider audience. While simulation-based training is identified as a valid teaching/learning strategy, little evidence exists for the design and use of virtual reality reusable e-resources in healthcare education. “Co-creation of Virtual Reality reusable e-resources for European Healthcare Education – CoViRR” ERASMUS+ strategic partnership aims to co-create virtual reality reusable e-resources promoting innovative practices in the digital era, by supporting current curricula and fostering open education. A co-creation approach will be followed in order to develop the 9 virtual reality reusable e-resources. Experts on clinical skills, learners, academics, health care professionals will come together into participatory workshops to envision and co-create specification/scenarios for the e-resources, but adequate training for teaching staff, academics, clinical skills experts, learning technologists and IT specialists is needed in order to successfully guide the process and co-create such resources. Thus, within CoViRR project we developed a curriculum for a 3 days face to face training to prepare participants for the practical elements on co-creation and implementation of Virtual Reality Reusable e-Resources (VRReR), combining theoretical and hands-on training.

A literature review and partners expertise contributed to the development of the learning objectives of the curriculum, while a pre and post questionnaire administered with the participants in order to measure their perceived knowledge and confidence on both participatory design approaches based on the ASPIRE framework and on the knowledge, understanding and implementation of VRReR.

The training had 23 participants coming from the 3 partners institutions and 2 associated partner institutions. Results indicated that their skills have significantly improved, both in self-reported confidence and knowledge and understanding of the co-creation methods to develop digital educational resources increased, as well as in self-reported confidence and knowledge and understanding of designing and developing VRReR. Furthermore, participants aim to utilise the co-creation methodology to develop educational resources as part of their educational practice.

Evaluation results make us confident to believe that the learning objectives of the training event were appropriate for the diverse audience and they also were successfully met. The proposed curriculum enables the participants to take the acquired knowledge back to their organisations in order to co-design and implement VRReR, but also allows them to re-use this knowledge in other projects within their own universities, thus enhancing EU digital learning and teaching capabilities

Keywords:

Participatory design, digital resources, e-learning, stakeholders training.