Walking through the OSCE: Creating an immersive virtual experience

Aim: This presentation will demonstrate an immersive virtual dental OSCE and will explain the process of staff-student design, development, and evaluation of this experience. Method: Multimedia virtual OSCE content was identified through a qualitative study and direct input from undergraduate dental students. Dental staff, students, and learning technologists developed a range video-based mock stations including 'good' and 'poor' performances. 360 video and drone footage were developed to create a virtual environment and a sense of movement within the clinical OSCE setting. An interactive 8 station virtual OSCE experience was then created with 'see it', 'try it', 'mark it' and 'feedback' interactions. The virtual OSCE experience was shown to students with no experience of OSCE assessments (year 1 dental students) and to students who had recently undertaken an OSCE (year 2 dental and year 1 hygiene and therapy students). Following ethical approval, paper-based questionnaires were used to collect data. Results: The process of development was successful. A total of 132 students evaluated the experience (over 95% response rate). Nearly all rated all aspects of the experience as important. Students viewed the interactive immersive OSCE experience as a positive contribution to the preparatory material. Students who had experienced OSCEs rated 'task done well' and communication-based station video content as being particularly important whereas students with little experience of OSCE assessments rated clinical task-based stations more highly. Interactions involving questions and seeing/using marking criteria were also rated highly. Contextual 360 video was rated positively by most students and some felt that drone footage was not needed. Conclusion: Staff-student co-production can be used to produce an immersive OSCE experience. Immersive virtual OSCE experiences are valued and are considered to enhance understanding and experience of assessments