Purdue nursing students get active learning experience with the heart through virtual reality program

Written By: Rebecca Hoffa, rhoffa@purdue.edu

Amy Nagle (center) leads students in exploring a virtual reality heart.(Photo provided by the Purdue Envision Center)

Purdue University School of Nursing students place their hands into a large, beating human heart, immersing themselves into anatomy rather than simply studying it.

As part of the Envision Center’s CollabXR program, which offers a collaborative, multi-user virtual and augmented reality platform that expands the classroom using 3D visualizations, Nursing clinical associate professor Amy Nagle invited a group of first-year students to take a deeper dive into their anatomy and physiology education through this active learning opportunity.

“Nursing is very hands-on,” Nagle said. “It’s not just about learning in a lecture. They need to be able to do the skills and take care of patients. We use simulation as a way to help them apply what they’re learning. This VR heart and CollabXR will allow me to be able to take it to the next step, where I’ll be able to show them internally what was happening to the patient to give them understanding at a deeper level, not just externally.”

When George Takahashi, lead visualization scientist in the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, approached Nagle with the opportunity to apply for the program, Nagle said she instantly thought of the ways it would enhance teaching pathophysiology, or how the body works.

“When George came to me from the Envision Center and mentioned that they were starting this CollabXR program and what it could do, my first thought was, ‘What if we could get a heart in there?’” Nagle said.

While Nagle began the program with a pilot group of four first-year students, she’s planning to expand it to roughly 130 juniors who are studying medical surgical nursing the Center for Nursing Education and Simulation, which she directs, this academic year.

“The students responded very positively to the experience,” Nagle said. “They were currently in anatomy and physiology, so it was very relevant to them, and they really liked being able to manipulate the heart around, touch it and interact with it. They really liked being able to see the heart from different viewpoints, and also, there’s a way to write on the heart, so they could circle parts. It really makes it more interactive. It’s more lifelike. They could also see how the heart actually beats and the different chambers and valves. It really allows them to engage with that heart more than just watching a video or looking at a picture and trying to memorize different things.”

Delaney Lee(Photo provided)

For Delaney Lee, a sophomore nursing student in the College of Health and Human Sciences, having this experience left her with an excitement for simulation and VR during her nursing education.

“It was a very helpful visual because sometimes you don’t understand how it’s working when you’re just looking at it through a picture or in a textbook, but when you’re seeing it moving right in front of you, you’re like, ‘That makes sense,’” Lee said. “I think it will really help other students — and it helped me — understand the (blood) flow and the function a lot better.”

For Nagle, this interactive way of teaching engages students deeper in their simulation work by being able to see inside of their “patient” and better understand the processes happening within the body.

“One of the things I really believe when I’m teaching nursing is that the students can really understand what to do as a nurse and how to understand what they’re seeing in somebody based on really understanding the pathophysiology,” Nagle said. “We have a pretty complex simulation that has to do with the heart in a patient that has heart failure and all sorts of things going on. Usually when we’re talking about it, I’m just drawing this 2D sketch that doesn’t really look like a heart and isn’t very interactive. If you also look at what’s available when students are learning about somebody’s heart, they’re really looking at a textbook picture or, at best, they’re watching an animation, but it’s still very passive.

“With this, I can actually place the heart in the manikin where the heart would be so when we are talking afterward about the scenario the students experienced, we could go back in, and I could put the heart in there and put it in the context of the whole body.

While it takes a lot of time and resources to develop these 3D models, Nagle noted she’s excited for the opportunities that might be available in the future.

“We’re hoping to get some funding to add some different layers and visualize blood flow and electrical activity through the heart,” Nagle said. “There are also opportunities for other systems like the lungs or the brain. Any system you can think of in the body could be used for this.”