136 - Comparing the Student Journey in Physical and Virtual Anatomy Labs

Poster Board Number: 136
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Vancouver Virtual Reality Anatomy and Pathology Project (VanVR APP) is a learning platform created by the UBC Hackspace for Innovation and Visualization in Education (HIVE) as a digital twin for the physical anatomy lab. To study the pedagogical and behavioral efficiency of VanVR, we designed a 3 group study. Participants were randomly assigned to learn the anatomy of the heart in one of the following labs: physical anatomy lab (PAL), Virtual reality with headset lab (VR), or web-based VanVR on 2D monitors (W). We posed two questions: 1) does using virtual labs lead to a better understanding of anatomy compared to the physical anatomy lab, and 2) do students interact differently with virtual anatomy models over physical models from human donors?

Forty-seven participants were recruited from the UBC Department of Psychology Human Subject Pool (n=12 in PAL; n=19 in VR; n=16 in W). All participants took a short anatomy pretest to determine their baseline knowledge of heart anatomy, regardless of the experimental group assignment. Each participant was then provided with an identical study guide to individually learn the anatomy of the heart and interact with the specimen in their assigned modality. We compared participant performance in a knowledge test (KT) to examine possible differences in learning outcomes between the 3 environments. The KT included 3 different question types: spatial anatomy, dimension synthesis, and semantic knowledge. Finally, participants answered survey questions about the user experience to identify how much they enjoyed the assigned learning modality. The dependent variables were performance on the KT and attitudes/emotions about the learning experience. We set 2 hypotheses: 1) participants’ performance in the KT will be similar in all groups, and 2) participants will demonstrate more enjoyment in the VR group relative to the other groups.
The pre-test results confirmed that participants had very little anatomy knowledge with an overall average of 31%. To test our first hypothesis, a repeated measures ANOVA of the KT showed no significant difference in performance as a function of group (p=0.395), question type (p=0.235), or question type by group interaction (p=0.103). With regards to our second hypothesis, there was notably a significant difference in the enjoyment of the experience as a function of group (p=.01), with higher mean scores in PAL and VR compared to W.

We conclude that the 3 lab designs are equally effective in teaching anatomy based on KT performance. Our preliminary results indicate that VR and W labs can be as pedagogically effective as PALs and that the student experience is positive among the three modalities. However, the PAL and VR groups expressed higher levels of enjoyment given the novelty of the experience. These findings demonstrate that learning modalities such as VR and W can be as effective as PAL in situations where learners do not have access to traditional anatomy teaching resources. Going forward, we will continue to test participants in all three groups to demonstrate stronger effects and statistical correlations.