Pre-clinical undergraduate students' perspectives on the adoption of virtual and augmented reality to their dental learning experience: A one-group pre- and post-test design protocol

Background: We live in a time where traditional education has rapidly incorporated online modalities due to the recent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) safety measures such as social distancing. Regardless of these challenges, health education constantly strives to implement the best technologies available for an effective student deep learning outcome. Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the dental pre-clinical stage may help stimulate students to better understand the foundation material prescribed in the curriculum. Most visual material available for students is still mainly based on 2D graphics. Thus, this study will attempt to evaluate the students' perceptions about implementing VR/AR technologies in the learning setting. Methods: A single-group pretest-posttest design will be implemented where students will be exposed to VR/AR and fill out two questionnaires, one before and one after the exposure. Conclusions: This project is intended to start once the institutional ethical approval is obtained. It is expected that the analysis from the current project will provide recommendations to improve the students' academic curriculum pre-clinical experience. The recommendations will be provided in the form of at least three scientific publications, with one publication for each subject area intended to be evaluated (i.e., head and neck anatomy, dental anatomy, and removable prosthodontics).