Of the many disruptive technologies being introduced within modern curricula, the metaverse, is of particular interest for its ability to transform the environment in which students learn. The modern metaverse refers to a computer-generated world which is networked, immersive, and allows users to interact with others by engaging a number of senses…

The purpose of this review was to (1) analyze the effectiveness of immersive virtual reality (iVR) and augmented reality (AR) as teaching/learning resources (collectively called XR-technologies) for gaining anatomy knowledge compared to traditional approaches and (2) gauge students' perceptions of the usefulness of these technologies as learning…

Virtual and augmented reality have seen increasing employment for teaching within medical and health sciences programs. For disciplines such as physiology and anatomy, these technologies may disrupt the traditional modes of teaching and content delivery. The objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to evaluate the impact of virtual…

Advances in computer visualization enabling both 2D and 3D representation have generated tools to aid perception of spatial relationships and provide a new forum for instructional design. A key knowledge gap is the lack of understanding of how the brain neurobiologically processes and learns from spatially presented content, and new quantitative…

Due to increasing demands in the amount of content to be learned within a medical and health sciences curriculum, there are benefits towards exploring options for new and effective delivery modes. Augmented reality technology has the potential to enhance learning in physiology and anatomy, where students require a three-dimensional knowledge of…

Although cadavers constitute the gold standard for teaching anatomy to medical and health science students, there are substantial financial, ethical, and supervisory constraints on their use. In addition, although anatomy remains one of the fundamental areas of medical education, universities have decreased the hours allocated to teaching gross…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented shift in how health science education is delivered (Sandars et al., 2020). With face-to-face learning, such as lab and classroom interactions, largely unavailable during the pandemic, institutions have been required to quickly shift the learning environment to a fully virtual format. While…

Consumer-grade virtual reality has recently become available for both desktop and mobile platforms and may redefine the way that students learn. However, the decision regarding which device to utilise within a curriculum is unclear. Desktop-based VR has considerably higher setup costs involved, whereas mobile-based VR cannot produce the quality of…