Objectives: To determine the need of contemporary immersive approaches (Virtual Reality) in teaching and training at medical sector. The main objective of this study was to explore the effects of text, video and immersive technologies learning methodologies for participants’ learning in public and private medical colleges and universities of Pakistan. Methods: In this quantitative research 87 medical students of 4th year from three public and five private medical colleges and universities participated. A laparoscopy operation was selected in consultation with senior medical consultants for this experiment. The experimental material was arranged in virtual reality, video and text based learning. At completion of each of which, participants completed a questionnaire about learning motivation and learning competency through the different mediums. Results: Statistical t-test was selected for the analysis of this study. By comparing the mean values of virtual reality, video, and text based learning methodologies in medical academics; result of virtual reality is at top of others. All performed model are statistically significant (P=0.000) and results can be applied at all population. Conclusion: Through this research, we contribute to medical students learning methodologies. In medical studies, both theoretical and practical expertise has a vital role, while repetition of hands-on practice can improve young doctors’ professional competency. Virtual reality was found best for medical students in both learning motivation and learning competency. Medical students and educationist may select virtual reality as new learning methodology for curriculum learning. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.3.44 How to cite this:Sattar MU, Palaniappan S, Lokman A, Hassan A, Shah N, Riaz Z. Effects of Virtual Reality training on medical students’ learning motivation and competency. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(3):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.3.44 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

An exploratory study to compare the effects of immersive virtual reality based training on the learning motivation of final year medical students as compared to video and text-based learning. Different modes of delivery of a training simulation of laparoscopy operation were presented to students and learning motivation corresponding to which were evaluated using the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. The study was conducted from September 2018 to May 2019. Undergraduate medical students from 8 medical colleges and universities across Punjab, Pakistan participated in this study. A total of 87 students with a mean age of 22.5 ± 4 years were recruited for the study. Of these, 57.4% (n = 50) were males and 42.6% (n = 37) were females. Paired sampled t-test was chosen for the statistical investigation for the study. The tests were conducted by comparing means of text, video, and virtual reality learning methodologies in medical students. All executed statistical models are having significance value P=.000. Therefore, results are generalizable and can be implemented across the population. Medical student motivation was observed to be the greatest in Virtual Reality settings as compared to video-based and text-based learning settings. Both theoretical and practical studies have importance in medical studies, whereas practical hand-on-practice can enhance medical students’ professional proficiency. Virtual reality was at the top in User experience, perceived competence, usefulness, and motivation for final year medical students. It can play a signficant role in contemporary teaching and learning methodology with medical educationist and students can get benefit from this technology.

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