By Angelica Jasper, Claire Hughes, Kay Stanney, Jennifer Riley, & Cali Fidopiastis of Design Interactive, Inc.
Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) are experiencing massive growth as platforms to support educational efforts, with an estimated $700M being invested in immersive education applications by 2025. Interestingly, while an estimated 80% of teachers already have ready access to VR/AR head worn displays, few use them regularly, but most want to uncover how best to incorporate them into the educational process. The desire to adopt VR/AR technology likely stems from its high efficacy, as on average, immersive training solutions have been found to be more effective and efficient than traditional training of cognitive, technical, and socio-emotional skills. The learning gains (pre- to post- test) from immersive training average 2.5% more per 1⁄4 hour of training for cognitive skills versus traditional training and 2.95% per hour gain in technical skills versus traditional training. Further, immersive training realizes ~30% more performance efficiency and equivalent fewer errors versus traditional training, with increases of ~30% in confidence and self-efficacy, though standard deviations tend to be high. These gains are believed to be derived from the immersive nature of VR/AR that can bolster knowledge acquisition, information retention, engagement, and presence. Users can proactively interact with 3D content in the confines of reality, facilitating enriching learning approaches. Within the military medical training domain, AR has successfully supported a variety of healthcare knowledge and skills including surgical training, anatomy lessons, and heart disease education. AR may be particularly suited to military medical training) because it provides innovative image-guided approaches, often with interactive, 3D images that provide a variety of real-time feedback (e.g., haptic feedback) through hands-on learning. Realistic, real-time feedback is crucial within the military medical domain due to fast-paced nature of the battlefield.
Despite the documented benefits of AR for learning and training, the AR industry is still working to overcome several developmental obstacles that may negatively impact information retention and performance. For instance, there is some evidence for attentional tunneling and skill transfer problems that inhibit learning in AR. Further, the connection between individual psychological characteristics and learning performance in AR is limited, leaving the question remaining: What makes someone well suited and responsive to learning in AR?
Individual Differences in Learning
Individuals differ in their ability to learn and retain information. Successful adult learning has been linked to psychological abilities, including processing speed, memory, and general intelligence. These propensities can be further impacted by both an individual’s level of internal motivation and their ability to believe that they have control over their lives, also known as internal locus of control. Performance is often enhanced by an internal locus of control in adult learners, which has been significantly connected to self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s personal judgement of how well they can perform at something given the skills they have. Someone with strong self-efficacy is more inclined to view challenges as a motivating factor to overcome and is driven to learning and growing their skillset. This individual psychological characteristic has been repeatedly linked to more successful learning performance, including higher engagement with the content and can even predict future learning successes. Differences in self-efficacy may be reflective of learning performance in many contexts, including a variety of medical trainings. Thus, the increased self-efficacy associated with VR/AR training is beneficial to learning.
Real-World Application
Recent work from Design Interactive seeks to establish what makes an individual receptive to learning in AR, specifically in the context of tactical casualty combat care (TCCC), a standardized military medical training curriculum. Design Interactive has developed AUGMED™, an AR-based TCCC trainer designed to teach and assess TCCC skills in an interactive, simulated environment.
In a recent study, AUGMED™ was used to assess the psychological effects of AR in order to better characterize “AR Psychological Suitability”, which characterizes the extent to which a context is receptive to and a system is capable of producing learning and desirable psychological and human performance outcomes in AR environments. Participants experienced a series of training modules to guide them through treatment of massive hemorrhage and battlefield respiratory injuries. Using the AR lessons as a guide, participants were then required to perform procedures and complete skills tests to assess overall learning performance.
Researchers parsed participants into low, medium, and high-performance groups to evaluate performer differences, including the individual psychological characteristic of self-efficacy. Group difference analyses revealed that high performers consistently had greater levels of self-efficacy associated with AR training, whereas low performers had lower levels of self-efficacy. In other words, those who believed they could perform the medical tasks given their AR lessons (in combination with any previously held knowledge) were the most successful at retaining the learned information (as measured by a skills test) and applying it in the experimental scenario. These findings are consistent with and reflective of prior self-efficacy and learning research, indicating that the AUGMED™ training suite may produce intended learning outcomes.
Suitability for AR Learning
Results from this study indicate that those individuals with higher self-efficacy exhibited better learning outcomes in an AR environment than those with low self-efficacy. These individuals with higher self-efficacy were more responsive to the AR learning modality whereas those with low self-efficacy may need more support (e.g., additional hints, explanations, guidance) when training in immersive environments. As these types of innovative technologies emerge and become mainstream, it will become even more valuable to identify the role of individual psychological factors that affect AR learning performance.
Contact:
Angelica Jasper
