Virtual Reality in Health and Medicine Education, 2019

The VirSam project aimed to give students in medicine, health and social sciences the opportunity to practice interprofessional collaborative learning (TPS) along patient courses in virtual arenas independent of other scheduled teaching. An important reason for creating virtual arenas is the practical challenges of giving students the opportunity to train enough in clinical situations (time on task), especially where they have to interact with others.

Traditionally, most of the students' contact with patients has taken place through hospital practice. Shorter length of stay means that the time the individual student has with patients is greatly reduced. There is thus a need for solutions that make the limited time they have with patients used more efficiently. Virtual arenas can be used for realistic training as preparation. Virtual solutions that are web-based and available to different groups of students (basic and further education) regardless of time and place.

The project systematically initiated the use of virtual arenas, a technology for teaching and learning that has been used to a very small extent. The project was well rooted in the international front on research on learning in 3D virtual arenas. The project responded to the recognized need for increased time on relevant assignments (time on task) and developed students' opportunities for self-regulated learning. The learning challenges were met by using the project's expertise from medical and health education, ICT / game technology and pedagogy to create innovative learning.

More applications have been developed an are described at www.virsam.no. The effect of one of these, ABCDE (systematic clinical observation) was studied in a four part randomized controlled trial (RCT) with 600 nursing and medicine students. In the RCT, the effect of both individual and groups-based training in VR was examined and found to be similar (non-inferior) to traditional teaching.

VirSam项目旨在为医学、健康与社会科学领域的学生提供机会，使其能够在虚拟实训空间中围绕患者诊疗路径开展跨专业协作学习（interprofessional collaborative learning，TPS），且无需受其他排定教学活动的制约。
创设虚拟实训空间的核心动因之一，在于解决当前学生临床实训面临的现实困境：学生难以获得充足的临床情境训练时长（time on task），尤其是在需要与他人开展互动的场景中。

传统模式下，学生大多通过医院实习接触患者。当前住院患者平均住院时长缩短，导致每名学生接触患者的时间大幅减少。因此亟需优化方案，使学生有限的患者接触时间得到更高效的利用。虚拟实训空间可用于开展仿真训练，作为临床实习的前置准备。此类基于网页的虚拟解决方案，可面向基础与继续教育阶段的各类学生群体开放，且不受时间与地域限制。

本项目系统性地推动了虚拟实训空间的应用——这类教学技术此前的应用范围极为有限。项目深度扎根于3D虚拟实训空间学习研究的国际前沿领域，回应了学界公认的“需提升学生相关任务投入时长（time on task）”的需求，并拓展了学生自我调节学习的空间。项目依托医学与健康教育学、信息与通信技术（ICT）与游戏技术以及教育学领域的专业知识，打造了创新性的学习方案，从而解决了相关学习难题。

更多已开发的应用详情可通过www.virsam.no查阅。其中一项应用——ABCDE（系统性临床观察法）的教学效果，在一项分为四个阶段、涵盖600名护理与医学专业学生的随机对照试验（randomized controlled trial，RCT）中得到了评估。在该随机对照试验中，研究人员对虚拟现实（Virtual Reality，VR）下的个体与团体培训的教学效果进行了评估，结果显示二者的教学效果与传统教学相当（非劣效）。