Abstract
This chapter delves into the cutting-edge domain of extended reality (XR) technology and its profound implications for mental health treatment and support. XR, encompassing immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences, has emerged as a powerful tool with the capability to revolutionize therapeutic practices and open new dimensions within the field of mental health. This chapter critically examines the transformative potential of XR in mental health, addressing its ability to provide safe and controlled spaces for therapeutic interventions and self-exploration. By allowing individuals to immerse themselves in alternate realities, XR creates an environment conducive to addressing various psychological challenges, such as anxiety, trauma, and social difficulties. The exploration within XR offers a range of possibilities, from tranquil natural environments for relaxation to simulated social interactions for skill development.
“Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process,”
John Dewey (1859 - 1952)
TopIntroduction
The justification of pedagogy in the context of Extended Reality (XR), which encompasses Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed/Hybrid Reality (MR) has become an ongoing source of complex ambiguity over the last decade, that the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to exacerbate (van der Niet and Bleakley, 2021). Ensuring the validity and reliability of XR experiences within health professions education remains central to the potential to rule out technologies as adjuncts to optimal pedagogic practice as an authentic means of providing insight and illumination of medical contexts, scenarios, and disease processes (McGrath et al, 2018). For the purposes of this chapter there will be four fundamental operationally definitive terms of what the umbrella term XR encompasses, firstly VR refers to the use of computer technology in the creation of simulated learning environments. Secondly, AR pertains to the addition of computerised content as an overlay to reality, which means that learners can actively interact both with real world and augmentations of it at the same time. Mixed or hybrid reality refers to the transection of virtual worlds and actual worlds, where physical and computerised objects can interact and exist concurrently. XR encompasses all of these and as a collective they have revolutionised health and medical training, particularly in relation to the practise of risk management and professional role identity in life and death situations, for example obstetric emergencies, as reported by Hayes, Hinshaw and Petrie (2018).
Training for the strategic management of risk in healthcare practice in situated contexts of healthcare provision has been a key focus in the use of XR in practice (Hilty et al, 2020). Not only does it involve rational aspects of cognitive knowledge or the purist demonstration of psychomotor skills and affective domain learning (Zulkilfli, 2019). It also encompasses the intuitive, tacit, and largely intangible intellectual instincts that develop with sustained experiential learning (Humpherys, Bakir and Babb, 2021). One of the key issues has been the challenge of assessing the last of these, what XR has enabled is the benchmarking of perceived levels of interprofessional and multi-disciplinary teamwork, where intuitive knowledge can be used to measure risk, regardless of the level of the organisational hierarchy within which personnel are employed (Goh and Sandars, 2020; Hayes, Hinshaw and Petrie, 2018). This chapter will explore the key epistemologies or ways of knowing, from a theoretical perspective, that can be used to ensure the level of authenticity necessary to highlight the pedagogical shifts in the application of learning theory which now characterise responsive curriculum design and adaptation to accommodate XR in practice.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Hybrid Curriculum: Is the term used to describe how online learning is integrated with traditional face to face learning and teaching.
Pedagogy: Is the methodological process and study of applied teaching and learning within specific subjects and academic disciplines.
Health Professions: Is the term used for workers who have been formally trained in the application of medical and healthcare principles underpinned by the core principles of care, compassion and evidence-based approaches to the care of people whose health necessitates assessment, diagnosis or management.
Hyflex Curriculum: Is an adaptation of hybrid learning where each class session and learning activity is offered in-person, synchronously online, and asynchronously online. With this approach learners make the decision of how they will participate with the learning opportunities afforded to them.
Augmented Reality (AR): Is a technology capable of superimposing or overlaying a computer-generated image across a visual projection of the real world, providing a composite view of the two.
Extended Reality (XR): Is the term given to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions, which are functionally digitally generated by technology and wearable accessories.
Sensory: Relates to the experience of sensation via the physical senses in terms of either perception or transmission.
Simulation: Is the integrated use of a computer model, which imitates reality in the context of study, where risk can be eliminated as part of initial scaffolded learning.
Paradigm: A set of concepts or thought patterns, incorporating specific theories, designated research methods, hypotheses, and typical standards of what is a legitimate claim to contribution to a specific field of theory or practice.
Virtual Reality (VR): Is the digitally generated simulation of a 3-D image or situated context or learning environment, within which a learner can be placed and with which they can interact by wearing electronic accessories such as eye goggles or gloves with sensors.
Mixed Reality (MR): Is the merging of virtual and actual reality to provide new mechanisms of visualizing given scenarios. The physical objects and digital objects can interact with each other in real time.
Immersion Technology: Is the digital equipment which provides the perception of being present in a created and non-physical world.