Knowledge Attainment and Engagement Among Medical Students: A Comparison of Three Forms of Online Learning

This study compared knowledge attainment and student enjoyment and engagement between clinical case vignette, patient-testimony videos and mixed reality (MR) teaching via the Microsoft HoloLens 2, all delivered remotely to third year medical students. The feasibility of conducting MR teaching on a large scale was also assessed.

Medical students in Year 3 at Imperial College London participated in three online teaching sessions, one in each format. All students were expected to attend these scheduled teaching sessions and to complete the formative assessment. Inclusion of their data used as part of the research trial was optional.

The primary outcome measure was performance on a formative assessment, which served to compare knowledge attainment between three forms of online learning. Moreover, we aimed to explore student engagement with each form of learning via a questionnaire, and also feasibility of applying MR as a teaching tool on a large scale. Comparisons between performances on the formative assessment between the three groups were investigated using a repeated measures two-way ANOVA. Engagement and enjoyment were also analysed in the same manner.

A total of 252 students participated in the study. Knowledge attainment of students using MR was comparable with the other two methods. Participants reported higher enjoyment and engagement (p<0.001) for the case vignette method, compared with MR and video-based teaching. There was no difference in enjoyment or engagement ratings between MR and the video-based methods.

This study demonstrated that the implementation of MR is an effective, acceptable, and feasible way of teaching clinical medicine to undergraduate students on a large scale. However, case-based tutorials were found to be favoured most by students. Future work could further explore the best uses for MR teaching within the medical curriculum.