Exploring the practicality of AR in a medical education setting.
In this blog post, I will be discussing a hypothetical user study involving augmented reality use by medical students simulating the steps of a surgery.
This study would aim to show the effectiveness of a student learning in an AR setting versus within a traditional lecture-taught method, by analysing which proves to be better in students retention of the skills learnt. In this study, I would be measuring retainability of information with and without the use of AR, and seeing if these results last over a set period of time. This would be done through a quasi-experiment of a control group alongside a group of individuals using augmented reality. Below outlines the key variables as well as specifics on this study.
Example of students using augmented reality in a medical learning environment.
Location: Within university lecture halls.
Sample: Approximately 50 University students studying medicine and surgery undergraduate degree.
Materials needed: Ethical forms completed, augmented reality device, medical surgery software, exam-style questionnaire.
Procedure: To begin, I would first gather all materials as stated above, as well as organise a diversified sample of students from the available students studying medicine population. I would want to cover a range of ages, as well as genders, previous academic performance, and technological ability.
Once I had separated the sample into two randomised groups, one group would be my experimental group and the other would be my control group. The aim behind this is to evaluate the difference between the two groups in knowledge retention, with the control group acting as a baseline for how well the experimental group perform. The control group would be walked through the steps of a surgery as normal in a lecture hall, following whatever system previously employed by the university. The experimental group, on the other hand, would be given a number of augmented reality headsets, and walked through the surgery visually- being shown the same information as the control group, only in an augmented and interactive format.
Immediately after each group has concluded their lecture, they would be asked to complete an exam-style questionnaire to analyse their retention for the information just learnt. Following two weeks, a similar exam-style questionnaire will be once again handed out for the students to complete. The aim behind both questionnaires is to not only investigate how well students retain the information on a short-term basis, but whether learning in AR has any affects on information retention on a long-term basis. This data would be quantitatively analysed and compared between the two groups, as well as between the two periods of time between learning.
Investigation & Analysis: The data gathered from both sets of questionnaires would be quantitatively analysed, including calculating averages and standard variances to investigate how each group performed on the exams, as well as a percentage increase/ decrease compared to their last academic exam. This would show the effectiveness of use of AR in a medical learning environment, as well as reducing the risk of bias in content learned due to basing the measure of effectiveness from the academic difference in each participant rather than as a whole group.
