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Identifying the characteristics of virtual reality gamification for complex educational topics

Falah, Jannat; Wedyan, Mohammad; Alfalah, Salsabeel F. M.; Abu-Tarboush, Muhannad; Al-Jakheem, Ahmad; Al-Faraneh, Muath; Abuhammad, Areej; Charissis, Vassilis

Authors

Jannat Falah

Mohammad Wedyan

Salsabeel F. M. Alfalah

Muhannad Abu-Tarboush

Ahmad Al-Jakheem

Muath Al-Faraneh

Areej Abuhammad



Abstract

Multidisciplinary topics in education pose a major challenge for traditional learning and teaching methods. Such topics can deter students from selecting particular courses or hinder their study progress. This study focused on the subject of medicinal chemistry, which is a discipline combining medicine and chemistry. This combination of applied and basic science creates a complex field of education that is challenging to both teach and learn. Chemical and pharmacological principles are typically presented in 2D molecular structures and, recently, 3D molecular models have been utilized to improve the visualization of chemical compounds and their chemical interactions. Contemporary studies have presented Virtual Reality (VR) as an alternative method for improving the learning and teaching of multidisciplinary specialties such as this. However, current educational efforts employing VR offer limited interactivity and a traditional teaching method previously presented in 2D. This reduces students’ interest and concentration in the taught subjects. This paper presents the development rationale of a novel VR educational application based on the evaluation of the user requirements by 405 pharmacy undergraduate students. The results informed the development and preliminary evaluation of a proposed VR serious game application, which was deployed in a real-life class environment and evaluated in contrast to traditional teaching methods by 15 students. The derived results confirmed the advantages of VR technology as a learning and teaching tool, in addition to the end-users’ willingness to adopt VR systems as a learning aid.

Citation

Falah, J., Wedyan, M., Alfalah, S. F. M., Abu-Tarboush, M., Al-Jakheem, A., Al-Faraneh, M., Abuhammad, A., & Charissis, V. (2021). Identifying the characteristics of virtual reality gamification for complex educational topics. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 5(9), Article 53. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5090053

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 20, 2021
Online Publication Date Sep 1, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Apr 5, 2023
Publicly Available Date Apr 5, 2023
Journal Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
Print ISSN 2414-4088
Publisher MDPI
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 5
Issue 9
Article Number 53
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5090053
Keywords virtual reality; gamification; Human-Computer Interaction; education; medical pharmacology; education equity; distance learning

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