An Immersive Web‐based Experience into the Heart

Abstract

Geometrically complex anatomical regions are difficult to represent in 2D images presented to students in lecture slides and reference texts. This problem has been traditionally mitigated by interactions with cadaveric specimens or other 3D anatomical models. However, given a recent trend away from cadaver-based anatomy education and exasperated by remote teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, student access to more interactive means of learning have been limited. In response to these issues, we have created an immersive, web-based tour of the heart using the Mozilla Hubs platform. A 3D model of a human heart displaying all internal features, coronary arteries, and great vessels was developed into a virtual space to serve as a digital classroom. To supplement the morphology of the heart, additional informational panels, structure labels, and pathways through the heart were added. Students choose an avatar and navigate using keyboard commands reminiscent of PC and web-based gaming, and the virtual classroom affords the ability to communicate with others in the space verbally or through text. The scale of the heart relative to an avatar is such that users experience each chamber as a large room where they are able to look up and down, rotate completely, and walk along a horizontal plane within and between each chamber. This resource was deployed as a supplemental, non-mandatory experience first introduced with a faculty member present following the heart and mediastinum lab, though the link to the experience was made available for students to return at any time. Three anonymous surveys were sent to students. The pre-experience survey asked 3 multiple choice questions on heart anatomy (n=24). The second was given following the experience, asking the same 3 multiple choice questions and for feedback on the utility of the experience itself (n=15). Of the 3 questions, the first increased in percent correct from 95.83% to 100%, the second question decreased from 83.33% to 80%, and the final question increased from 79.17% to 100% correct. In the post survey 93.33% of respondents reported they were very or somewhat likely to return to the experience for independent review and 57.15% reported they were very or somewhat likely to return with peers or a faculty member. 93.33% agreed that the experience increased their knowledge of the spatial relationships of the structures within each chamber and 86.67% agreed that the experience increased their knowledge of the structures found in each chamber. The final survey, sent out 4 weeks later at the end of the course, was open to the entire class (n=65). Among the same 3 multiple choice questions, the first was answered correctly by 100% of responders, the second by 98.46%, and the last by 93.85%. The majority (3/5) of incorrect answers were provided by students who did not engage in the Hubs experience at all. Of the students who did utilize the experience, 54.17% agreed it helped them understand the locations of and geometric relationships between internal structures of the heart at the time, 20.83% agreed it helped perform better on the thorax exam, and 25% agreed it helped retain knowledge of the internal structures of the heart. Future uses of Hubs in anatomy instruction will include more task-based interactions with the space and incentives for collaborative learning with expansion to other anatomical regions.