An experimental study on usefulness of virtual reality 360° in undergraduate medical education

Abstract

Purpose: Various smartphone-based virtual reality (VR) applications allow the users to view 360° videos of real or simulated places. A 360° VR is captured with a special camera that simultaneously records all 360° of a scene unlike the standard video recording. An experimental study was conducted where 4th-year medical students participated in a workshop. Patients and methods: The study was conducted at College of Medicine (COM-J), King Saud bin Abdul-Aziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 360° VR videos including, pre-briefing and debriefing sessions were held for the experimental group, whereas group two (control group) was provided with the interactive lecture. A total of 169 undergraduate medical students attend the 4th year at the College of Medicine (KSAU-HS) Jeddah. Results: The response rate was 88% for 169 participants, 57 (VR) and 112 (conventional method). The majority of students (93%) thought that VR can be used in medical education. Post-MCQs score (out of 20) was significantly higher in the VR group, when compared to the conventional group (17.4+2.1 vs 15.9+2.9, p-value <0.001). The OSCE score was also better with the VR group (12.9+4.1 vs 9.8+4.2, p-value <0.001). Overall rating of VR satisfaction experience showed a mean of 7.26 of 10. Conclusion: VR provides a rich, interactive, and engaging educational context that supports experiential learning-by-doing. In fact, it raises interest and motivation for student and effectively supports knowledge retention and skills acquisition.