XR Educational Classrooms for Health Sciences

Introduction Immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) – known together as Extended Reality (XR) – are moving from a source of entertainment into a new technology for education. The University of Utah is a leader in this effort with 16 departments across campus conducting cutting-edge research in …

Public Health Clinicals During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned

Abstract Public health nursing clinical courses serve an essential role in the education of prelicensure baccalaureate students. When clinical sites closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it provided new opportunities for integrating virtual platforms into nursing clinicals. The new structure for the clinical courses included assignments using virtual software, synchronous online classes, and blended learning …

Social isolation and social media consumption among graduate students during COVID-19: An examination using Social Comparison Theory

Introduction The COVID-19 crisis transformed the way we communicate with each other. Pre-existing theoretical frameworks can build structure out of the chaos; social-interaction theory is one of these. During our social distancing and prior to the vaccine’s arrival, physical distancing was adopted as the primary strategy to ‘flatten the curve’ of the virus’s spread. The …