paramedicine education

Clinical placements allow students the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge and become workforce ready. Demand for clinical placements from education providers already exceeds supply. As healthcare workforce shortages continue, the need for increasing numbers of graduates will generate additional strain, and policymakers targeting health workforce shortages must be cognisant of their impact on the education and health sectors. At the same time, clinical placements must be fit for purpose and meet the learning needs of students. The diverse array of placement models has been compounded by rapid developments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges and considerations include labour intensity, need for capacity building, importance of engagement at institutional and local supervisor levels, cost (including that to students), planetary impact, availability and equity. The future of high-quality clinical placements needs to be secured and built on a sustainable framework to support future clinical placement capacity.

Clinical placements allow students the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge and become workforce ready. Demand for clinical placements from education providers already exceeds supply. As healthcare workforce shortages continue, the need for increasing numbers of graduates will generate additional strain, and policymakers targeting health workforce shortages must be cognisant of their impact on the education and health sectors. At the same time, clinical placements must be fit for purpose and meet the learning needs of students. The diverse array of placement models has been compounded by rapid developments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges and considerations include labour intensity, need for capacity building, importance of engagement at institutional and local supervisor levels, cost (including that to students), planetary impact, availability and equity. The future of high-quality clinical placements needs to be secured and built on a sustainable framework to support future clinical placement capacity.

Introduction: Ambulance service clinical placements are fundamental to paramedicine student education, but the quality and safety of these placements can be highly variable. Inspired by positive results from a nursing facilitator model, this study reports on a collaboration between an Australian university and ambulance service that introduced a paramedic clinical facilitator for undergraduate paramedic students during their ambulance clinical placements. This article describes the experiences of a clinical facilitator model for paramedicine students and their preceptors during the study period.

Methods: This study follows an exploratory qualitative research methodology. After implementation of the paramedic clinical facilitator model, two focus groups with paramedicine student participants and two semi-structured interviews with their paramedic preceptors were conducted. Intimate observations were recorded in a reflexive logbook by the facilitator, which was kept for data analysis. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants, and thematic analysis was used to code data and conceptualise themes.

Results: Three broad overarching themes were conceptualised from the data: 1) increased educational opportunities, 2) improved clinical placement management and 3) greater student support and welfare. Both paramedicine students and paramedic preceptors felt that the paramedic clinical facilitator model improved the quality of ambulance clinical placements for undergraduate paramedicine students.

Conclusion: This study suggests that a paramedic clinical facilitator model improved the safety and quality of ambulance clinical placement experience for paramedicine students and preceptors. Universities and ambulance services could consider implementing a paramedic facilitator model for ambulance clinical placements in their local contexts.

This concise paper outlines the initial stages of a project involving a transdisciplinary team of educational researchers, practitioners, student designers, and the Auckland Hospital Design Lab in the design of innovative technology enhanced solutions to enhance patient and health care practitioner experiences. We outline the methodological design of the collaborative Design Based Research (DBR) approach. Using DBR, the project explores real world problems in health care with a team of student designers evaluating the application of mobile and wearable technologies to these problems. The goal of the project is the development of design principles for innovative learning environments that facilitate student-determined learning in real world scenarios.

This special issue of AJET explores the critical educational use of the recently popularized technologies of mobile augmented reality (AR) and mobile virtual reality (VR). The advent of Pokemon Go brought the world’s awareness of mobile AR to a brief climax, and the hype surrounding the rise of affordable virtual reality technologies has been driven by social media giants Google and Facebook, and subsequent uptake by the main smartphone manufacturers. With the ubiquity of smartphone ownership among our students this presents a unique opportunity to explore the educational impact of these symbiotic technologies and their emergent ecosystems. While it is early days for research in these domains, we were interested in exploring beyond the technological hype to finding examples of integrating these technologies within learning designs that scaffold learner-generated content and contexts based upon a solid foundation of the scholarship of technology enhanced learning. The six articles in...

In this short paper we introduce a conceptual framework that is under development to create virtual educational environments to simulate collaborative health team experiences. Building on our work of developing virtual environments for authentic Paramedicine education scenarios, we are extending the concept across the seven health disciplines at the university, beginning initially with a prototype involving three health discipline teams: Paramedicine, Nursing, and Physiotherapy. Using a design based research methodology we are developing prototypes of immersive simulated environments to simulate the real world interaction between these three health teams for our students. We leverage a low cost mobile BYOD approach enabling rapid prototyping and development of these scenarios.

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

This research aimed to investigate the delivery of postgraduate study through incorporation of Google Applications and Skype technologies as collaborative tools. Participants were a cohort of full time working employees from a South African cohort of collaborating universities enrolled in the PostGraduate Diploma in Higher Education course, located in Limpopo and Western Cape provinces. The data was collected through interviews from participants on Skype and Google technologies that include Google drive, Gmail, Google docs, Google spreadsheet, and Google chat. Data was analysed through ethnographic content analysis and conversational analysis. Based on the findings, it was evident that Google applications and Skype technologies support collaborative learning. The study results show that these technologies have an important role in future delivery of academic post graduate programmes in institutions of Higher Learning amongst working employees. This study recommends use of these technologies in scenarios involving multiple institutions across the world. Cloud computing has a pivotal role in enabling online collaborative learning activities and it enhances effective skills development in cases where students cannot afford to attend courses on full time basis due to work commitments or geographical location

Smartphone ownership has become ubiquitous (International Telecommunication Union, 2017), but also fragmented by the variety of manufacturers and models available. In particular there are significant differences between the two major smartphone platforms (iOS and Android). This workshop is designed to provide participants with a cross-platform toolkit for implementing BYOD user-generated mobile video content in higher education contexts (Cochrane & Sinfield, 2019). Grounded on the concepts of learner-generated contexts, heutagogy or self-determined learning (Blaschke & Hase, 2019), and authentic learning (Burden & Kearney, 2016), the workshop facilitators will outline a framework for user-generated mobile video production (Sinfield, 2018). The workshop will illustrate the framework by examples of BYOD student projects, and will introduce participants to a hands-on exploration of an ecology of resources for mobile collaborative video production and sharing via digital social media pl...

This paper explores the interrelationship between educational design research, design thinking that guides the design process, and the unique opportunities that mobile learning enables. As an example we outline the design thinking principles and processes that informed the development of wireless mobile presentation systems (MOAs) designed to create a flexible infrastructure to enable the exploration of new pedagogies in different educational contexts. The project used design thinking within an educational design research methodology to provide an in house solution to creating a supporting infrastructure to enable the implementation of a new framework for creative pedagogies and curriculum redesign. We reflect upon example implementations of using mobile social media and MOAs as a catalyst for our framework for creative pedagogies, and propose collaborative curriculum design principles for integrating the use of mobile social media within new pedagogical paradigms.

In this short paper we introduce a conceptual framework that is under development to create virtual educational environments to simulate collaborative health team experiences. Building on our work of developing virtual environments for authentic Paramedicine education scenarios, we are extending the concept across the seven health disciplines at the university, beginning initially with a prototype involving three health discipline teams: Paramedicine, Nursing, and Physiotherapy. Using a design based research methodology we are developing prototypes of immersive simulated environments to simulate the real world interaction between these three health teams for our students. We leverage a low cost mobile BYOD approach enabling rapid prototyping and development of these scenarios.

This article evaluates the results of two prototype iterations of a design-based research project that explores the application of mobile mixed reality (MMR) to enhance critical care clinical health education simulation in Paramedicine. The project utilises MMR to introduce critical elements of patient and practitioner risk and stress into clinical simulation learning scenarios to create more authentic learning environments. Subjective participant feedback is triangulated against participant biometric data to validate the level of participant stress introduced to clinical simulation through the addition of MMR. Results show a positive impact on the learning experience for both novice and professional paramedic practitioners. The article highlights the development of implementation and data triangulation methodologies that can be utilised to enhance wider clinical simulation contexts than the original context of Paramedicine education. We argue that our collaborative transdisciplinary design team model provides a transferable framework for designing MMR-enhanced clinical simulation environments.

This paper explores the use of mobile virtual reality (mVR) to create authentic learning environments for health education, initially in three contexts, followed by the development of collaborative health team scenarios that mirror professional practice. The use of mVR mitigates the dispersion of the university's seven health departments across three geographical campuses. We argue that the use of mVR provides an immersive and authentic student experience of real-world medical team scenarios. Building upon our experiences we critique the development of design principles for the integration of mVR within the curriculum and the establishment of a socio-cultural ethos of collaboration across the seven health disciplines at the institution. The unique contribution of our methodology is the focus upon a low-cost rapid user-generated development model explicitly founded upon design-based research, supported by a transdisciplinary team, modelling interprofessional practice.

This paper outlines the first two stages of a design-based research project that aims to develop more authentic critical care educational simulation experiences and learner-centred pedagogies in paramedicine education. The first two stages involve the exploration of mobile virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning environment, and the design of prototype solutions for designing immersive scenarios and 360-degree video enhanced critical care simulations. Thus far we have identified a set of design principles that will guide the implementation of the project. These design principles will be modified in light of the subsequent project evaluation stages.

The department of Paramedicine at Auckland University of Technology is committed to establishing informed evidence and strategies representative of all ethnicities. The MESH360 team propose that immersive mixed reality (XR) can be employed within the learning environment to introduce critical elements of patient care through authentic environmental and socio-cultural influences without putting either students, educators, practitioners or patients at risk. Clinical simulation is a technique that replicates real-world scenarios in a controlled and non-threatening environment. However, despite the legal and moral obligations that paramedics have to provide culturally competent care, a lack of evidence and guidelines exist regarding how to adequately integrate simulation methods for cultural competence training into paramedicine education. In our curriculum, clinical simulation has been used mainly to teach the biomedical aspects of care with less focus on the psychological, cultural, a...

This paper outlines the first two stages of a design-based research project that aims to develop more authentic critical care educational simulation experiences and learner-centred pedagogies in paramedicine education. The first two stages involve the exploration of mobile virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning environment, and the design of prototype solutions for designing immersive scenarios and 360-degree video enhanced critical care simulations. Thus far we have identified a set of design principles that will guide the implementation of the project. These design principles will be modified in light of the subsequent project evaluation stages.

This paper proposes a design based research (DBR) framework for designing mobile virtual reality learning environments. The application of the framework is illustrated by two design-based research projects that aim to develop more authentic educational experiences and learner-centred pedagogies in higher education. The projects highlight the first two phases of the DBR framework, involving the exploration of mobile virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning environment, and the design of prototype solutions for the different contexts. The design of the projects is guided by a set of design principles identified from the literature.

In this short paper we introduce a conceptual framework that is under development to create virtual educational environments to simulate collaborative health team experiences. Building on our work of developing virtual environments for authentic Paramedicine education scenarios, we are extending the concept across the seven health disciplines at the university, beginning initially with a prototype involving three health discipline teams: Paramedicine, Nursing, and Physiotherapy. Using a design based research methodology we are developing prototypes of immersive simulated environments to simulate the real world interaction between these three health teams for our students. We leverage a low cost mobile BYOD approach enabling rapid prototyping and development of these scenarios.

The Multiple Environments Simulation Hub (MESH360) research cluster was established in 2016 to explore ways of making critical care simulation environments more authentic learning experiences for students (Cochrane et al., 2016). Since its establishment, three cycles of data collection have occurred exploring immersive mixed reality (XR) to enhance traditional clinical simulation methodologies in Paramedicine education (Aguayo et al., 2018; Cochrane et al., 2020). Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology focused on prototyping in practice to generate design principles (Cochrane et al., 2017; McKenney & Reeves, 2019), along with a mixed-methods and multimodal approach to data collection and analysis in educational research (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011; Lahat, Adali & Jutten, 2015), led the MESH360 team to develop a framework for designing immersive reality enhanced clinical simulation (Cochrane et al., 2020).   Building upon this work, a set of design principles permitted t...

The Multiple Environments Simulation Hub (MESH360) research cluster was established in 2016 to explore ways of making critical care simulation environments more authentic learning experiences for students (Cochrane et al., 2016). Since its establishment, three cycles of data collection have occurred exploring immersive mixed reality (XR) to enhance traditional clinical simulation methodologies in Paramedicine education (Aguayo et al., 2018; Cochrane et al., 2020). Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology focused on prototyping in practice to generate design principles (Cochrane et al., 2017; McKenney & Reeves, 2019), along with a mixed-methods and multimodal approach to data collection and analysis in educational research (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011; Lahat, Adali & Jutten, 2015), led the MESH360 team to develop a framework for designing immersive reality enhanced clinical simulation (Cochrane et al., 2020).   Building upon this work, a set of design principles permitted t...

In this short paper we introduce a conceptual framework that is under development to create virtual educational environments to simulate collaborative health team experiences. Building on our work of developing virtual environments for authentic Paramedicine education scenarios, we are extending the concept across the seven health disciplines at the university, beginning initially with a prototype involving three health discipline teams: Paramedicine, Nursing, and Physiotherapy. Using a design based research methodology we are developing prototypes of immersive simulated environments to simulate the real world interaction between these three health teams for our students. We leverage a low cost mobile BYOD approach enabling rapid prototyping and development of these scenarios.

The Multiple Environments Simulation Hub (MESH360) research cluster was established in 2016 to explore ways of making critical care simulation environments more authentic learning experiences for students (Cochrane et al., 2016). Since its establishment, three cycles of data collection have occurred exploring immersive mixed reality (XR) to enhance traditional clinical simulation methodologies in Paramedicine education (Aguayo et al., 2018; Cochrane et al., 2020). Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology focused on prototyping in practice to generate design principles (Cochrane et al., 2017; McKenney & Reeves, 2019), along with a mixed-methods and multimodal approach to data collection and analysis in educational research (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011; Lahat, Adali & Jutten, 2015), led the MESH360 team to develop a framework for designing immersive reality enhanced clinical simulation (Cochrane et al., 2020).   Building upon this work, a set of design principles permitted t...

Introduction Even with paramedicine's evolution, clinical decision-making will always be a crucial learning and teaching requirement. As part of their learning, paramedic students need to develop critical thinking and collaborative approaches with others. The aim was to review the literature around escape room activity as a pedagogical approach for paramedic education. The intent is to contribute to the discussion around authentic and engaging approaches to teaching clinical thinking and decision making in paramedicine. Methods A systematic review was undertaken to review existing literature on using this approach in higher education. EBSCO, Medline, CINAHL, ScienceDirect, ProQuest and PubMed were used to review paramedic and health education strategies using a list of keywords. Results There were 23 scholarly papers examining the use of escape rooms in an educational context found. There was no reference to using this teaching methodology in paramedicine, but some health contex...

The department of Paramedicine at Auckland University of Technology is committed to establishing informed evidence and strategies representative of all ethnicities. The MESH360 team propose that immersive mixed reality (XR) can be employed within the learning environment to introduce critical elements of patient care through authentic environmental and socio-cultural influences without putting either students, educators, practitioners or patients at risk. Clinical simulation is a technique that replicates real-world scenarios in a controlled and non-threatening environment. However, despite the legal and moral obligations that paramedics have to provide culturally competent care, a lack of evidence and guidelines exist regarding how to adequately integrate simulation methods for cultural competence training into paramedicine education. In our curriculum, clinical simulation has been used mainly to teach the biomedical aspects of care with less focus on the psychological, cultural, a...

The department of Paramedicine at Auckland University of Technology is committed to establishing informed evidence and strategies representative of all ethnicities. The MESH360 team propose that immersive mixed reality (XR) can be employed within the learning environment to introduce critical elements of patient care through authentic environmental and socio-cultural influences without putting either students, educators, practitioners or patients at risk. Clinical simulation is a technique that replicates real-world scenarios in a controlled and non-threatening environment. However, despite the legal and moral obligations that paramedics have to provide culturally competent care, a lack of evidence and guidelines exist regarding how to adequately integrate simulation methods for cultural competence training into paramedicine education. In our curriculum, clinical simulation has been used mainly to teach the biomedical aspects of care with less focus on the psychological, cultural, a...

This paper outlines the first two stages of a design-based research project that aims to develop more authentic critical care educational simulation experiences and learner-centred pedagogies in paramedicine education. The first two stages involve the exploration of mobile virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning environment, and the design of prototype solutions for designing immersive scenarios and 360-degree video enhanced critical care simulations. Thus far we have identified a set of design principles that will guide the implementation of the project. These design principles will be modified in light of the subsequent project evaluation stages.

This paper reports on the second iteration prototype design stage of an immersive reality (XR) enhanced simulation project in critical healthcare higher education. While there is no doubt of the positive impact on the development of a variety of clinical skills through the use of XR in health education, a literature review indicates that the level of engagement with learning theory and the wider literature to inform the design of these learning environments is limited. The authors propose that XR can be employed within the learning environment to introduce critical elements of patient and practitioner risk and stress through environmental and socio-cultural influences without putting either students, educators, practitioners or patients at real risk, but create a safe learning environment that more authentically simulates these risk elements. The MESH360 project involves a collaborative transdisciplinary team of educational researchers, designers, practitioners, and working professi...

The Multiple Environments Simulation Hub (MESH360) research cluster was established in 2016 to explore ways of making critical care simulation environments more authentic learning experiences for students (Cochrane et al., 2016). Since its establishment, three cycles of data collection have occurred exploring immersive mixed reality (XR) to enhance traditional clinical simulation methodologies in Paramedicine education (Aguayo et al., 2018; Cochrane et al., 2020). Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology focused on prototyping in practice to generate design principles (Cochrane et al., 2017; McKenney & Reeves, 2019), along with a mixed-methods and multimodal approach to data collection and analysis in educational research (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011; Lahat, Adali & Jutten, 2015), led the MESH360 team to develop a framework for designing immersive reality enhanced clinical simulation (Cochrane et al., 2020).   Building upon this work, a set of design principles permitted t...

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

Mobile devices and a vast array of accompanying applications offer significant affordances to create, consume, share, collaborate and communicate—affordances that could be easily leveraged to facilitate meaningful learning. A positive disruption arising from Covid-19 that aligns with the affordances of mobile learning is the uncoupling of time and space in the learning process. Traditionally formal learning is a process that is predominately viewed as an experience that is ‘timetabled’— scheduled to eventuate at a ‘place’—lecture or a tutorial (or similar) in a room or lecture theatre. In this concise paper, an ecology of resources is discussed along with guiding principles for designing and facilitating uncoupled authentic and student-determined learning post the emergency remote teaching phase.

Ethics are rules of behaviors which morally good or bad. Bioethics is the study of ethics about by advances in biology and medicine. Health care providers should have knowledge about health professional ethics principles, public officials' ethical behavior principles and ethical principles concerned about other legislation. They should find the required information to make logical, objective and accurate decisions where they may face with ethical problems in their professional life. Unfortunately in our country there isn't any special vocational ethics course designed for paramedics. Our aim is to design a Vocational Ethics Course for Paramedics which includes all issues of bioethics.

This paper explores the use of mobile virtual reality (mVR) to create authentic learning environments for health education, initially in three contexts, followed by the development of collaborative health team scenarios that mirror professional practice. The use of mVR mitigates the dispersion of the university's seven health departments across three geographical campuses. We argue that the use of mVR provides an immersive and authentic student experience of real-world medical team scenarios. Building upon our experiences we critique the development of design principles for the integration of mVR within the curriculum and the establishment of a socio-cultural ethos of collaboration across the seven health disciplines at the institution. The unique contribution of our methodology is the focus upon a low-cost rapid user-generated development model explicitly founded upon design-based research, supported by a transdisciplinary team, modelling interprofessional practice.

This paper explores the application of a design-based research (DBR) methodology to inform the re-design of pedagogical strategies for studio-based classrooms within undergraduate higher education programmes. The goal is to establish a transferable model that is student-centred around authentic educational and professional learning environment as described as Dewey for the digital age. The paper outlines the initial analysis and exploration stage of a DBR methodology that leads to the development of a proposed ecology of resources designed to stimulate rhizomatic pedagogical environments intended to support collaborative student teams rather than the traditional classroom structure. The main aim of this project is to look at alternative models to the studio or classroom environment that can enhance and improve the more traditional teacher-centric environments of the classroom through focusing upon what the student does and their graduate profiles. These ‘ontological pedagogies’ will...

This article evaluates the results of two prototype iterations of a design-based research project that explores the application of mobile mixed reality (MMR) to enhance critical care clinical health education simulation in Paramedicine. The project utilises MMR to introduce critical elements of patient and practitioner risk and stress into clinical simulation learning scenarios to create more authentic learning environments. Subjective participant feedback is triangulated against participant biometric data to validate the level of participant stress introduced to clinical simulation through the addition of MMR. Results show a positive impact on the learning experience for both novice and professional paramedic practitioners. The article highlights the development of implementation and data triangulation methodologies that can be utilised to enhance wider clinical simulation contexts than the original context of Paramedicine education. We argue that our collaborative transdisciplinary design team model provides a transferable framework for designing MMR-enhanced clinical simulation environments.

This special issue of AJET explores the critical educational use of the recently popularized technologies of mobile augmented reality (AR) and mobile virtual reality (VR). The advent of Pokemon Go brought the world’s awareness of mobile AR to a brief climax, and the hype surrounding the rise of affordable virtual reality technologies has been driven by social media giants Google and Facebook, and subsequent uptake by the main smartphone manufacturers. With the ubiquity of smartphone ownership among our students this presents a unique opportunity to explore the educational impact of these symbiotic technologies and their emergent ecosystems. While it is early days for research in these domains, we were interested in exploring beyond the technological hype to finding examples of integrating these technologies within learning designs that scaffold learner-generated content and contexts based upon a solid foundation of the scholarship of technology enhanced learning. The six articles in...

This paper explores the use of mobile virtual reality (mVR) to create authentic learning environments for health education, initially in three contexts, followed by the development of collaborative health team scenarios that mirror professional practice. The use of mVR mitigates the dispersion of the university's seven health departments across three geographical campuses. We argue that the use of mVR provides an immersive and authentic student experience of real-world medical team scenarios. Building upon our experiences we critique the development of design principles for the integration of mVR within the curriculum and the establishment of a socio-cultural ethos of collaboration across the seven health disciplines at the institution. The unique contribution of our methodology is the focus upon a low-cost rapid user-generated development model explicitly founded upon design-based research, supported by a transdisciplinary team, modelling interprofessional practice.

This special collection of Research In Learning Technology explores the state of the art of mobile mixed reality (MMR) in education. The special collection includes eight articles that cover; a systematic review of MMR in healthcare higher education, using mobile devices for connecting people to places, and a variety of case studies of implementing MMR in educational contexts. The range of papers illustrates the emergence of MMR as a platform for designing authentic learning environments in both formal and informal learning situations. The papers also highlight a general lack of engagement with new learning theories and models in the use of MMR to design transformative learning experiences.Published: 27 November 2018Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2018, 26: 2195 - http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2195

This paper explores the application of a design-based research (DBR) methodology to inform the re-design of pedagogical strategies for studio-based classrooms within undergraduate higher education programmes. The goal is to establish a transferable model that is student-centred around authentic educational and professional learning environment as described as Dewey for the digital age. The paper outlines the initial analysis and exploration stage of a DBR methodology that leads to the development of a proposed ecology of resources designed to stimulate rhizomatic pedagogical environments intended to support collaborative student teams rather than the traditional classroom structure. The main aim of this project is to look at alternative models to the studio or classroom environment that can enhance and improve the more traditional teacher-centric environments of the classroom through focusing upon what the student does and their graduate profiles. These ‘ontological pedagogies’ will...

In this article, we present a theoretical framework for mixed reality (MR/XR) self-determined learning to enhance ecological literacy in free-choice educational settings. The framework emerged from a research study in New Zealand which aimed to explore how learning experiences which incorporate mobile technologies within free-choice learning settings can be designed to enhance learner development of marine ecological literacy. An understanding of how mobile technology can be integrated into the teaching and learning of sustainability education that incorporates free-choice learning contexts, such as visitor centres, is of strategic importance to both education outside the classroom and adult learning. Following a design-based research methodology, the framework is presented in the form of a set of design principles and guidelines, informed by key theories in ecological literacy and free-choice learning, heutagogy, bring your own device and self-determined learning. We briefly describe how the framework provided the foundation for an educational intervention. This paper aims to assist researchers and developers of MR/XR immersive learning environments to consider design principles and processes that can enhance learning outcomes within free-choice settings, such as museums and visitor centres.

One way of designing transformative learning environments is to frame teaching and learning around building learning communities. Cormier promotes the idea of creating ecologies where communities can interact, and seeding this interaction via triggering events. Building on these ideas in this paper we evaluate the use of the SAMR framework and the conception of three levels of creativity to trigger transformative curriculum design within two different learning communities in distinct course contexts including: Graphic Design, and Communications Studies. The two case studies provide practical examples of using social media to explore transformative curriculum design.

This article evaluates the results of two prototype iterations of a design-based research project that explores the application of mobile mixed reality (MMR) to enhance critical care clinical health education simulation in Paramedicine. The project utilises MMR to introduce critical elements of patient and practitioner risk and stress into clinical simulation learning scenarios to create more authentic learning environments. Subjective participant feedback is triangulated against participant biometric data to validate the level of participant stress introduced to clinical simulation through the addition of MMR. Results show a positive impact on the learning experience for both novice and professional paramedic practitioners. The article highlights the development of implementation and data triangulation methodologies that can be utilised to enhance wider clinical simulation contexts than the original context of Paramedicine education. We argue that our collaborative transdisciplinary design team model provides a transferable framework for designing MMR-enhanced clinical simulation environments.

One way of designing transformative learning environments is to frame teaching and learning around building learning communities. Cormier promotes the idea of creating ecologies where communities can interact, and seeding this interaction via triggering events. Building on these ideas in this paper we evaluate the use of the SAMR framework and the conception of three levels of creativity to trigger transformative curriculum design within two different learning communities in distinct course contexts including: Graphic Design, and Communications Studies. The two case studies provide practical examples of using social media to explore transformative curriculum design.

This paper explores the use of mobile virtual reality (mVR) to create authentic learning environments for health education, initially in three contexts, followed by the development of collaborative health team scenarios that mirror professional practice. The use of mVR mitigates the dispersion of the university's seven health departments across three geographical campuses. We argue that the use of mVR provides an immersive and authentic student experience of real-world medical team scenarios. Building upon our experiences we critique the development of design principles for the integration of mVR within the curriculum and the establishment of a socio-cultural ethos of collaboration across the seven health disciplines at the institution. The unique contribution of our methodology is the focus upon a low-cost rapid user-generated development model explicitly founded upon design-based research, supported by a transdisciplinary team, modelling interprofessional practice.

This article evaluates the results of two prototype iterations of a design-based research project that explores the application of mobile mixed reality (MMR) to enhance critical care clinical health education simulation in Paramedicine. The project utilises MMR to introduce critical elements of patient and practitioner risk and stress into clinical simulation learning scenarios to create more authentic learning environments. Subjective participant feedback is triangulated against participant biometric data to validate the level of participant stress introduced to clinical simulation through the addition of MMR. Results show a positive impact on the learning experience for both novice and professional paramedic practitioners. The article highlights the development of implementation and data triangulation methodologies that can be utilised to enhance wider clinical simulation contexts than the original context of Paramedicine education. We argue that our collabo-rative transdisciplinary design team model provides a transferable framework for designing MMR-enhanced clinical simulation environments.

In this article, we present a theoretical framework for mixed reality (MR/XR) self-determined learning to enhance ecological literacy in free-choice educational settings. The framework emerged from a research study in New Zealand which aimed to explore how learning experiences which incorporate mobile technologies within free-choice learning settings can be designed to enhance learner development of marine ecological literacy. An understanding of how mobile technology can be integrated into the teaching and learning of sustainability education that incorporates free-choice learning contexts, such as visitor centres, is of strategic importance to both education outside the classroom and adult learning. Following a design-based research methodology, the framework is presented in the form of a set of design principles and guidelines, informed by key theories in ecological literacy and free-choice learning, heutagogy, bring your own device and self-determined learning. We briefly describe how the framework provided the foundation for an educational intervention. This paper aims to assist researchers and developers of MR/XR immersive learning environments to consider design principles and processes that can enhance learning outcomes within free-choice settings, such as museums and visitor centres.

In this short paper we introduce a conceptual framework that is under development to create virtual educational environments to simulate collaborative health team experiences. Building on our work of developing virtual environments for authentic Paramedicine education scenarios, we are extending the concept across the seven health disciplines at the university, beginning initially with a prototype involving three health discipline teams: Paramedicine, Nursing, and Physiotherapy. Using a design based research methodology we are developing prototypes of immersive simulated environments to simulate the real-world interaction between these three health teams for our students. We leverage a low cost mobile BYOD approach enabling rapid prototyping and development of these scenarios.