Farah hasan
Farah is a Master’s student in the Health Science Education (HSED) program. Her thesis work explores the use of Virtual Reality (VR) tools for anatomy education. Currently, she is investigating how the use of clinical virtual environments may facilitate learning pelvic anatomy while also considering the impact of cognitive load and cyber sickness. For more about her research project, scroll down.
The (UNDER)USE OF VR TECHNOLOGY: The traditional use of a virtual reality (VR) does not unlock its full potential to enhance the learning environment. VR is uniquely capable of immersing learners in a simulated interactive, contextually-relevant space that ca facilitate deeper learning through memory associations.
THE CHALLENGE: Educational materials need to minimize extraneous cognitive load, which distracts and hinders learning, while optimizing germane cognitive load, which promotes meaningful organization of new information. How these competing elements can be balanced in a virtual environment remains an open question.
A LESS “BARE-BONES” APPROACH TO ANATOMY EDUCATION: Providing additional clinical context may facilitate leaning. Our study will evaluate the educational efficacy of a VR module which presents a clinical scenarios and anatomical knowledge in an immersive, contextually-relavant, virtual environment.
