Abstract Virtual reality has long existed, but its wider adoption in education is recent. Studies informed by theoretical underpinned co-creation frameworks and utilization of theoretical informed evaluations are scarce in literature. Thus, this study internationally evaluated the efficacy of three virtual reality reusable e-resources (VRReRs), co-created based on the ASPIRE framework, for teaching clinical skills to university students. The study followed a mixed-methods approach, combining SUS, SUS Presence Questionnaire, TAM, and UTAUT2 with a focus group discussion. Additionally, for one VRReR, a quantitative pre/post evaluation of knowledge and comparison with lecture notes followed. Results demonstrated moderately to highly usability, effectively facilitated a strong sense of presence, confidence while using them, and willingness to continue using VRReRs in the future, while increased knowledge of the learners, highlighted their effectiveness. Although some usability issues were identified, these were considered easy to address. This work evidence, in an international context, that co-created VR resources are highly acceptable and effective, similar to other types of digital or traditional resources developed through participatory inquiry paradigm. By leveraging the benefits of VR technology, VRReRs have the potential to transform and enhance the learning experience in the field of clinical skills, ultimately advancing the digitalization of higher education.

There has been an increased interest in medical education and, specifically, in identifying appropriate methods to ensure efficiency in medical students’ learning process. The design and development of Immersive experiential technologies, including Virtual patients, chatbots, and Virtual, Augmented, or Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR), through co-creative methods, find fertile ground to support medical educational material. The aim of the current paper was to evaluate the perceptions and gain insights on healthcare technologists’ and educators’ experience regarding a series of co-creation sessions conducted during the design and development of XR educational resources. Results of the qualitative research showed that co-creation can be an interactive and engaging method that involves individuals from multidisciplinary backgrounds for effectively designing XR educational resources. However, strict adherence to best practices, as described in this work, is required to avoid hindering the effectiveness of the process and the quality of the final resources.

Curriculum size constantly challenges healthcare education and training. Technology enhanced, immersive educational content like Virtual, Augmented, or Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR collectively XR) constantly aims to facilitate knowledge retention and skills acquisition in the healthcare sector. Core challenge in this effort is the increasing costs, in time and resources, required for designing and developing XR immersive educational content. An approach to address this challenge is participatory design methods. Co-creation approaches distribute the burden of content development amongst the educators' community and facilitate decentralized bottoms-up content creation. This approach requires data modeling approaches that facilitate digital asset discoverability, reusability and consumption through visual authoring tools. This work describes the conceptualization and implementation of a UX taxonomy for annotating immersive AR/VR/MR content at the asset level for maximum repurposing capacity. A brainstorming session between educational and technology experts was conducted and conceptual details of the terms of the taxonomy were described. The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) vocabulary was utilized to organize this devised taxonomy and link it with existing medical ontology terms, formulating an RDF endpoint of the nominated ENTICE ontology. This ontology was able to link medical terms with UX and educational properties in a data structure that can annotate and contextually encapsulate any XR digital asset. An example such term is described and presented as proof of application. The semantic modelling implemented in this work is directly applicable to a previously proposed visual data structure and subsequent authoring environment that could facilitate XR resource design and authoring from non-technical experts.

Virtual Reality (VR), blanket term used for all the reality-virtuality spectrum, is exploding in proliferation, especially in healthcare. The core challenge of this explosion is the timely and cost-effective provision of bespoke content. Co-creative approaches can facilitate this endeavor by making the educators active participants in the development process reducing development overheads and democratizing healthcare digital content creation. This panel session aims at health educators, VR technologists, developers and technology enthusiasts. It will present, and actively engage its audience with co-creative methods and approaches, providing them with the gateway experience that could become useful for introducing such methods in their institutions and workflows. The panelists are cross-disciplined educational technologists/medical educators with extensive experience in the field of technology enhanced learning (TEL) who have implemented such methodologies in practice. The workshop will follow a mixed format. A brief “observations from the field” introduction to the topics of VR TEL and co-creation will be followed by an introduction to real world healthcare VR projects and resources. In these, realistic examples, the participants will engage in hands-on storyboarding and non-technical design and development tasks, in order to acclimate with the co-creative process and become able to explore it for their own use cases.

Cancer is one of the most prevalent diseases in Europe and the world. Significant correlations between dietary habits and cancer incidence and mortality have been confirmed by the literature. Physical activity habits are also directly implicated in the incidence of cancer. Lifestyle behaviour change may be benefited by using mobile technology to deliver health behaviour interventions. M-Health offers a promising cost-efficient approach to deliver en-masse interventions. Smartphone apps with constructs such as gamification and personalized have shown potential for helping individuals lose weight and maintain healthy lifestyle habits. However, evidence-based content and theory-based strategies have not been incorporated by those apps systematically yet. The aim of the current work is to put the foundations for a methodologically rigorous exploration of wellness/health intervention literature/app landscape towards detailed design specifications for connected health m-apps. In this context, both the overall work plan is described as well as the details for the significant steps of application space and literature space review. Both strategies for research and initial outcomes of it are presented. The expected evidence based design process for patient centered health and wellness interventions is going to be the primary input in the implementation process of upcoming patient centered health/wellness m-health interventions.

As adults get older, the risks are increasing on their health, such as chronic diseases, functional decline and geriatric syndromes which threaten their well-being. Technology has many features to support aging wellness enabling older people maintaining healthy and sociable as they grow. However, the needs of the elderly of the population are not always the same. Stealth assessment, coming from the educational domain, can assess such needs. Virtual scenarios, interactive simulation technologies that recreate realistic scenarios combined with novel and effective interaction modalities such as dialogue integrations are contemporary means for such endeavors. Thus, coalescing all these axes and disciplines this work aims to explore the applicability of a dialogue based virtual scenario stealth assessment approach for evaluating the perceptions of elderly towards technology based health interventions. Utilizing a simple dialogue based authoring and deployment platform a simple scenario was devised. 21 elderly, aged 60-80 (6 males, 15 females) run the scenario and filled out a validator questionnaire for their perceptions towards technology. Correlation was discovered between the devised instrument and the elderlys desire to use technology in everyday life. These results provide the necessary foundations for refining future iteration of such stealth assessment instruments with Evidence Centered Design Principles.

Many platforms have emerged as response to the call for technology supporting active and healthy aging. Key requirements for any such e-health systems and any subsequent business exploitation are tailor-made design and proper evaluation. This paper presents the design, implementation, wide deployment, and evaluation of the low cost, physical exercise, and gaming (exergaming) FitForAll (FFA) platform system usability, user adherence to exercise, and efficacy are explored. The design of FFA is tailored to elderly populations, distilling literature guidelines and recommendations. The FFA architecture introduces standard physical exercise protocols in exergaming software engineering, as well as, standard physical assessment tests for augmented adaptability through adjustable exercise intensity. This opens up the way to next generation exergaming software, which may be more automatically/smartly adaptive. 116 elderly users piloted FFA five times/week, during an eight-week controlled intervention. Usability evaluation was formally conducted (SUS, SUMI questionnaires). Control group consisted of a size-matched elderly group following cognitive training. Efficacy was assessed objectively through the senior fitness (Fullerton) test, and subjectively, through WHOQoL-BREF comparisons of pre-postintervention between groups. Adherence to schedule was measured by attendance logs. The global SUMI score was 68.33±5.85%, while SUS was 77.7. Good usability perception is reflected in relatively high adherence of 82% for a daily two months pilot schedule. Compared to control group, elderly using FFA improved significantly strength, flexibility, endurance, and balance while presenting a significant trend in quality of life improvements. This is the first elderly focused exergaming platform intensively evaluated with more than 100 participants. The use of formal tools makes the findings comparable to other studies and forms an elderly exergaming corpus.

To tackle the problem of training the careers of senior citizens numerous educational options may be attempted. However, the emerging complex puzzle of the diversity of training needs for the aforementioned trainee group, consisting of a mixture of formal and informal careers, calls for a careful and perhaps more radical than the usually attempted approach. To this extent, this paper describes elements of the innovative efforts followed upon the training design of the DISCOVER EU project. Specifically, simulations of virtual patients in Second Life are exploited in conjunction with educational components and objects in semantically extended e-learning environments, in an attempt to make more realistic everyday training cases and diverse topic, content rich approaches. The whole endeavor is presented in view of the existing limitations to elderly careers' training and is soon to lend itself to a rigorous pilot phase in Greece. Planned evaluation sessions are envisaged to certify successes, to inform for any required improvements but also to identify pitfalls.