Abstract:

Immersive learning environments foster higher learners’ engagement and facilitate the learning of abstract and complex concepts. The pandemic and the associated need for online and hybrid learning have encouraged efforts in the development of such learning environments. The affordances offered by game-based learning and 3D interactive platforms are of particular interest in the fields of medicine and health education.

This poster presents the process we used to design and develop a prototype for an interactive learning environment dedicated to human anatomy education anchored in educational theories of learning, especially the Universal Design for Learning framework. With the purpose of helping learners understand the content of human anatomy courses in a more intuitive and interactive manner, we used an iterative process involving the input from students and designers at each step to develop a multimedia teaching tool called Anatomy 3D. Through interactions with 3D models, our learning environment leads students through anatomical structures using a scenario-based quiz. Within each quiz or scenario, each question builds on the previous one, helping learners to build and follow “pathways” throughout the body. Between each question, the student gets feedback tailored to their response. The novelty of Anatomy 3D among the wide range of tools already existing lies in the fact that it highlights the functional relationships between anatomical elements, the understanding of which is important to build an accurate mental representation of human body systems as complex as the brain for example. Moreover, Anatomy 3D is bilingual, with all content available in both French and English, one of our goals being to expand to additional languages, including Spanish. Our more recent development has been to adapt Anatomy 3D to a virtual reality system allowing an even more immersive experience for learners.

Although we have not shared this latest improvement with students yet, we will be providing attendees of the INTED 2023 conference the opportunity to experience the virtual reality version of Anatomy 3D.

Keywords:

3D, bilingual, human anatomy, interactive, learning environment, virtual reality.