Comprehensive Summary

The project will be implemented in three phases following ADDIE model of instructional design – Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. Study design would involve a mixed method involving qualitative approach during both pre-development and evaluation phases, and a quantitative approach during the evaluation phase. The study setting and context would be International Medical University. The population (study will include) would be faculty involved in teaching microbiology and semester 2 students of the Biomedical science programme who enrol into the microbiology module. The APU team would be involved in the development of storyboard, UI/UX design, creation of 3D assets, animation/interaction, programming, sounds/narration and testing for the VR platform, using facilities at APU XR Studio.

Project Justification

In the event of lockdown e.g., due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the students are not able to come to the lab in person to learn the skills. Commercial software’s may not cater all the needs specifically to our required situation. In real time, it requires lot of supervision from multiple staff and demonstrators to learn the skills. If we can create our own teaching material, it will cover the essential core techniques in microbiology testing. By launching it in a virtual platform, this can enable this process for individual students to have a firsthand learning experience. This will give them a personalized learning experience with visual proximity in real time. Experienced faculty can always add additional tips when we develop the virtual platform ourselves for the experiments. The intention is to develop a virtual laboratory material that can later be extended to different programmes in IMU to contextualize their learning.

Objectives

1. To identify the needs and gaps of existing microbiology skills training (qualitative and quantitative)
2. To develop a virtual learning platform for skills training using augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) technology
3. To evaluate the learning value of the virtual learning platform for skills training

Phases Of Work

Estimated Budget

Project Timeline