Integrating Virtual Reality Labs (Desktop and Head-Mounted Display) Into a Graduate-Level Course

• In Event: Learning With Virtual and Augmented Reality: Examining the Theoretical, Technological, and Assessment Factors for Learning

Abstract

Theory
Genomics, the analysis of the information contained within our DNA, is a rapidly developing field that has brought many advances to medical practice. However, changes in the field are outpacing the ability of medical and scientific teaching to adequately prepare clinicians and analytical laboratory personnel. With specialization at a professional level, technicians for clinical wet-lab work are trained in dedicated programs, and genomic data analysts and clinicians get little to no training in the process of data acquisition that precedes the analysis. Many methods utilize expensive, specialized equipment and reagents, making it technically challenging, pedagogically unrealistic, and often prohibitively costly to teach in a traditional laboratory setting.

Integrating virtual labs (vLABs) into a graduate-level course may provide a solution. vLABs can increase learning outcomes significantly over traditional teaching lectures and teacher demonstrations alone (Bonde et al., 2014; Bortnik et al., 2017; Makransky et al., 2016). Furthermore, vLABs allow students to explore unobservable phenomena, to conduct experiments in a much shorter time period than traditional wet labs, and to assess students’ progress and provide them with additional information to assist in their training in the form of explanations, check-up questions and simulations that help obtain a deeper understanding of the material.
Our study is framed around two main questions:
1) Do vLABs provide a realistic experience of advanced laboratory techniques and improved content understanding in a graduate level course?
2) How does the student experience differ when performing a vLAB on a desktop computer compared to a virtual reality headset, and does this impact student motivation?

Design & Implementation
Students in a graduate course in Genomic Methodologies (n=15) completed six Labster virtual laboratory simulations with integrated questions, each with a pre-lab quiz and a post-lab questionnaire to assess content understanding and student motivation. For four labs students were given access to VR headsets. The topics for the simulations were covered in class, in lectures and in wet-labs, or not discussed in class. Furthermore, three students were observed in a think-aloud investigation, to track the decision-making and reasoning as the students complete the simulation, and to study usability. In accordance with our approved ethics protocol, data analysis takes place upon completion of the course (August 2019).

Assessment
Preliminary analysis of pre-lab quizzes and in-lab questions suggest virtual labs improve content understanding in a graduate level course. Many students self-reported improved content understanding and reported high satisfaction with virtual labs upon completing the post-lab survey.

Students most often criticized technical glitches as well as the rigidity of the simulations. Students preferred desktop simulations to headsets, reporting both motion sickness and cumbersome reading on the headset as reasons.

We see a benefit in laboratory simulations in terms of student engagement and improved learning outcomes, and argue that students would benefit from optional access. We conclude that there is no added benefit to the virtual reality headset over desktop virtual reality simulations at this time, and that indeed they may provide an obstacle to traditional forms of learning that include reading and note taking.

Authors

• Martina Steiner, University of Toronto

• Johanna Carroll, University of Toronto

• Hedieh Najafi, University of Michigan