LEARNING AND USABILITY WITHIN A VIRTUALREALITY TRAINER FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS

摘要

Virtual reality (VR) offers the potential to train medical students on high-risksituations. The current study investigated VR training of medical students todiagnose and treat a patient avatar experiencing a serious head injury. The userinterface was investigated, including use of tools, comfort and VR locomotion,and found to be sufficiently high to warrant training within a medical curriculum.In addition, actual learning as a function of VR training was assessed bycomparing medical students' knowledge structures to an expert knowledgestructure before and after training. Students' knowledge structures became moresimilar to an expert's knowledge structure indicating that their conceptualunderstanding of core head-injury concepts increased as a result of VR training.The study was carried out under the auspices of Project TOUCH (TelehealthOutreach for Unified Community Health), a multi-year collaboration betweenThe University of Hawaii (UH) and The University of New Mexico (UNM).