Exploring educators' use of immersive technology as a pedagogical tool in health education: a scoping review protocol

This scoping review will identify and map the existing literature on the use of immersive technology (IMT) by health educators who are employed for the purpose of educating future and practicing health professionals in tertiary education and professional practice settings.

Interest in the use of IMT in health education is growing globally, but there is a paucity of information on the perspective and characteristics of educators when IMT is used in health education. Scoping this data will provide a broad understanding of the perceived usability and viability of IMT for health educators who are not currently using this method.

The review will include all published and unpublished studies on health educators, employed for the purpose of educating future and practicing health professionals, who use IMT in tertiary education or professional practice settings. The review will exclude papers on artificial intelligence or students' experience of IMT.

The JBI methodology for scoping reviews will be followed. Seven databases-Academic Search Ultimate, Applied Science and Technology Source Ultimate, CINAHL Ultimate, Education Research Complete, Health Source: Nursing/Educator Edition, Scopus, and PubMed-will be searched to retrieve papers published between 2006 and the present, in any language. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Google Scholar, and Informit will be searched for unpublished secondary results, such as dissertations, theses, and conference papers. Papers will be screened by 2 reviewers against the eligibility criteria. Data will be extracted using a tool developed and tested by the reviewers. The results will be mapped according to the concepts of interest and presented in tabular and narrative format.

OSF https://osf.io/tj3xq.