Knowledge Attainment and Engagement Among Medical Students: A Comparison of Three Forms of Online Learning

Ashlyn A Stackhouse,1,* Damir Rafi,1,* Risheka Walls,1,2 Rebecca V Dodd,1 Kerry Badger,1 Daniel J Davies,1 Celia A Brown,3 Adrian Cowell,1 Karim Meeran,1 Omid Halse,1 James Kinross,4 Martin Lupton,1 Elizabeth A Hughes,5 Amir H Sam1 1Imperial College School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK; 2Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK; 3Warwick Medical School, Department of Medicine, Warwick, UK; 4Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London, UK; 5Health Education England, London, UK*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Amir H Sam, Imperial College London, Charing Cross Campus, Reynolds Building, St Dunstan’s Road, London, W6 8RP, UK, Tel +442075895111, Email a.sam@imperial.ac.ukObjective: This study compared knowledge attainment and student enjoyment and engagement between clinical case vignette, patient-testimony videos and mixed reality (MR) teaching via the Microsoft HoloLens 2, all delivered remotely to third year medical students. The feasibility of conducting MR teaching on a large scale was also assessed.Setting & Participants: Medical students in Year 3 at Imperial College London participated in three online teaching sessions, one in each format. All students were expected to attend these scheduled teaching sessions and to complete the formative assessment. Inclusion of their data used as part of the research trial was optional.Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measure was performance on a formative assessment, which served to compare knowledge attainment between three forms of online learning. Moreover, we aimed to explore student engagement with each form of learning via a questionnaire, and also feasibility of applying MR as a teaching tool on a large scale. Comparisons between performances on the formative assessment between the three groups were investigated using a repeated measures two-way ANOVA. Engagement and enjoyment were als