Lecturers and learning designers of fully online postgraduate qualifications within the Faculty of Health Sciences face the challenge of creating learning activities that simulate real-life experiences for postgraduate students. These students are also expected to develop key competencies such as communication, collaboration, presentation skills, and empathy, key competencies that traditional online methods may not fully support. In higher education, escape rooms are utilised to foster collaborative learning, leadership, communication, and critical thinking skills while offering engaging and immersive experiences. With the growth of technology and online education, virtual reality has gained increasing popularity to create these immersive experiences. This study explores the use of FrameVR, an online metaverse platform, to enhance student engagement and simulate real-life experiences. Guided by the escapED framework as described by Clarke et al. (2017), a virtual "Coffee Shop" escape room was developed to evaluate the usability of this tool. Participants, including university lecturers, tutors, interns, and learning designers, provided qualitative feedback through two iterative rounds of data collection using Google Forms and researcher observations. Initial feedback identified several challenges related to system invitations, the virtual environment setup, and survey design, which informed improvements in the second iteration. Although participants expressed enthusiasm for the engaging nature of the platform, they encountered difficulties navigating the environment and interacting with multimedia activities. The findings suggest that enhancing user experience through just-in-time support mechanisms, such as Chatbots, and ensuring testing of browser compatibility and external application integration, may mitigate these barriers in future implementations.

Authors:
Mari van Wyk, University of Pretoria, South Africa

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Mari van Wyk is a Senior Learning designer and Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mari-van-wyk-3396b334

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