A review of the use of virtual reality head-mounted displays in education and training

In the light of substantial improvements to the quality and availability of virtual reality (VR) hardware seen since 2013, this review seeks to update our knowledge about the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) in education and training. Following a comprehensive search 21 documents reporting on experimental studies were identified, quality assessed, and analysed. The quality assessment shows that the study quality was below average according to the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument, especially for the studies that were designed as user evaluations of educational VR products. The review identified a number of situations where HMDs are useful for skills acquisition. These include cognitive skills related to remembering and understanding spatial and visual information and knowledge; psychomotor skills related to head-movement, such as visual scanning or observational skills; and affective skills related to controlling your emotional response to stressful or difficult situations. Outside of these situations the HMDs had no advantage when compared to less immersive technologies or traditional instruction and in some cases even proved counterproductive because of widespread cybersickness, technological challenges, or because the immersive experience distracted from the learning task.     

Autopsy-Based Learning is Essential But Underutilized in Medical Education: A Questionnaire Study

To this day, autopsies and dissections have been essential in medical education, but declining autopsy numbers have endangered this long-standing tradition. Students' perceptions of these teaching methods should be constantly updated to help educators understand how to achieve their teaching goals. The purpose of this study was to explore the state of autopsy- and dissection-based teaching in two Finnish universities based on the experiences of the students, survey their perceptions of such teaching, and to compare the Finnish situation with students' perceptions in other countries as it emerges from medical literature. A questionnaire went to 859 second-, fourth-, and sixth-year medical students. The questions concerned dissection and autopsy classes these students had attended, the views of the students in regard to the number of classes, and the benefits of and attitudes towards autopsy teaching. An open question of how to improve autopsy teaching was included. The response rate was 19.4%. Most respondents requested more autopsy and dissection classes, especially practical education. They found autopsies most beneficial in learning anatomy and dealing with one's own emotions related to death. Their experiences proved least beneficial for interaction with the relatives of a deceased patient and for people skills. Integrational methods and focusing on the main learning outcomes were suggested as improvements. Overall, students found dissection and autopsy teaching important, but felt concerned about the diminishing autopsy numbers. Focusing on main learning objectives and better integration of autopsies in the teaching of different specialties could help to utilize autopsies to a greater extent.     

Assessing applications for collaboration: from collaboratively usable applications to collaborative technology

The continually increasing number of applications said to facilitate collaboration makes it very difficult for educators to identify and evaluate the ones that are suitable for educational purposes. In this paper we argue that from the educational point of view, it is meaningful to make a distinction between collaboratively usable applications and collaborative technology. Collaboratively usable applications are systems that can be used for collaboration, whilst collaborative technology is technology that is especially designed to support and establish collaboration. To distinguish between these two kinds of technologies, we propose four criteria for collaborative technology: its design is grounded on some explicitly argued theory of learning or pedagogical model; it relies on the idea of groupware; it provides procedural facilitation; and it offers representational and community‐building tools.     

Students Acquiring Expertise through Student-Centered Learning in Mathematics Lessons

This article reports the results of a study that investigated junior high school students’ experiences with learning in mathematics lessons that were based on self-guidance, use of technology, and minimalist instruction. The study was part of a ClassPad project and data were obtained from reports written by the 23 students after the ClassPad project ended. A model describing the student’s process of mastering doing and learning mathematics through acquiring expertise processes was constructed by using grounded theory method. The mastery of doing and/or learning was reached either with satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Two different learning profiles, one concluding with students feeling satisfied with their learning and the other concluding with students feeling unsatisfied, illustrated the students’ typical processes. The findings further revealed that when the teacher’s role was minimized and the students had the opportunity to self-guide their learning in an environment with various materials and easy-to-use technology, student-centered learning occurred.     

Enhancing non-technical skills by a multidisciplinary engineering summer school

In general engineering studies focus on the technical skills in their own discipline. However, in their subsequent industrial careers, a significant portion of their time needs to be devoted to non-technical skills. In addition, in an increasingly globalised world collaboration in teams across cultures and disciplines is paramount to the creation of new and innovative products. In order to enhance the non-technical skills for groups of engineering students a series of innovation courses has been arranged and delivered in close collaboration with an industrial company (Bang & Olufsen). These courses have been organised as summer schools called ‘Conceptual Design and Development of Innovative Products’ (CD-DIP) and delivered outside the usual educational environment. In order to explore the impact of this single course, we have conducted a study among the students participating from 2007 to 2013. This has been carried out both qualitatively using interviews with selected students as well as quantitatively using a survey. The results are outstanding in demonstrating that the non-technical skills obtained in this single course have been of high value for a large portion of the students' subsequent professional life.     

Students' Pedagogical Thinking and the use of ICTs in Teaching

This article discusses students' pedagogical thinking in situations where the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has a (well-defined) pedagogical role and rationale. By analysing students' pedagogical thinking in this setting, it is also possible to better understand their motivations and self-regulation. Pedagogical thinking as viewed from the student's angle is a new area of educational research. Our research method is a combination of the Stimulated Recall interview and the semi-structured theme interview. In addition, some background data were gathered by questionnaire to discern students' different uses of ICTs and their contexts. The findings suggest how the educational use of ICTs is considered to be meaningful and motivating by both genders and among all the interviewed age groups, in spite of the fact that an acute and vocal critique seems to develop among older students. The differences reside in students' reasoning regarding decision making in task operations between genders, which was one of the background variables—girls actively include identity and opinion, while boys emphasize the quality of performance as motives for decisions.     

Capturing teacher students’ emotional experiences in context: does inquiry-based learning make a difference?

In the present study teacher students?? contextual learning experiences were examined longitudinally in authentic study environments using the contextual activity sampling system, a means of mobile-supported experience sampling. The students?? (n?=?9) experiences were first recorded during a 2?week period in their first year of study. The same measurements were repeated again for a 2?week follow-up in the second year, accompanied by interviews before and after the follow-up. The first year of study consisted mostly of lectures and ordinary small-group work, whereas the second measurement period ran parallel to the completion of an intensive inquiry-based project, which was the focus of the present study. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that studying during the inquiry-based period produced stronger experiences of being challenged as well as negative affects than the teacher-centered period. The participants?? experiences of competence, commitment and positive affects did not differ during the two periods. However, interview data indicated that the participants enjoyed the inquiry-based period and that the work was intensive. Contextual data and interviews were also used to describe students?? experiences during one particular study session during the inquiry-based project. The results suggest that negative affects may be an essential part of the process of gradually learning to take responsibility for both individual and collaborative learning processes. Possibilities for using experience-sampling methods to analyze collaborative learning are also discussed.     

The effects of laser welding on heterogeneous immunoassay performance in a microfluidic cartridge

Sealing of a microfluidic cartridge is a challenge, because the cartridge commonly contains heat-sensitive biomolecules that must also be protected from contamination. In addition, the objective is usually to obtain a sealing method suitable for mass production. Laser welding is a rapid technique that can be accomplished with low unit costs. Even though the technique has been widely adopted in industry, the literature on its use in microfluidic applications is not large. This paper is the first to report the effects of laser welding on the performance of the heterogeneous immunoassay in a polystyrene microfluidic cartridge in which biomolecules are immobilized into the reaction surface of the cartridge before sealing. The paper compares the immunoassay performance of microfluidic cartridges that are sealed either with an adhesive tape or by use of laser transmission welding. The model analyte used is thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). The results show that the concentration curves in the laser-welded cartridges are very close to the curves in the taped cartridges. This indicates, first, that laser welding does not cause any significant reduction in immunoassay performance, and second, that the polystyrene cover does not have significant effect on the signal levels. Interestingly, the coefficients of variance between parallel samples were lower in the laser-welded cartridges than in the taped cartridges.     

Student teachers in the contact zone: developing critical intercultural ‘teacherhood’ in kindergarten teacher education

This paper reports on the results of a narrative-grounded investigation ofstudent teachers' intercultural experiences and learning during their teaching practice. Our interest is in the meaning of the intercultural contact zone and how education for diversities is conceptualised and reflected upon in Finnish teacher education. Critical event narratives were collected from 10 kindergarten student teachers' teaching practice portfolios where the focus was on observing and reflecting on diversities in education. Theoretically, the study relies on Pratt's theory of contact zone. The methods and conditions for supporting student teachers' understanding of diversities in teacher education are discussed.