Preliminary findings on UK secondary educators' perceptions of XR in health education: benefits, barriers, and content creation
Preliminary findings on UK secondary educators' perceptions of XR in health education: benefits, barriers, and content creation
Extended Reality (XR) technologies have applications for teaching and learning across wide educational domains. In health education, XR has shown value through applications such as anatomy visualization, surgical simulation, and clinical skills development. However, these developments remain largely concentrated in higher education and professional training, with limited exploration in foundational education, despite adolescence being a critical period for shaping lifelong health behaviours. Here we begin to address this gap by investigating how UK secondary school educators perceive the potential of XR for health education. In collaboration with LifeLab, a research-based science and health literacy initiative at the University of Southampton, this study asked teachers of health-related subjects for their perception of the educational benefits of XR (focusing particularly on Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) and the current barriers to adoption across personal, technical, and institutional dimensions. At the time of publication the preliminary findings reported here are based on a sample size of 14, with data collection on-going. Preliminary findings show that while educators hold positive perceptions of XR’s value for Health Education, actual usage remains extremely limited. This reflects a ‘Usefulness–Usability Gap’ within the Technology Acceptance Model, in which the difficulty of sourcing or creating suitable XR contents, alongside some technical and institutional barriers, emerge as key obstacles to adoption.
Huang, Ying
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Fair, Nic
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Godfrey, Keith
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Millard, David
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Boniface, Michael
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Bagust, Lisa
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Huang, Ying
2069db4c-6d18-4c10-b4ca-bc0c03f46e08
Fair, Nic
743fd34e-7e2b-42d0-818e-1db641e789be
Godfrey, Keith
0931701e-fe2c-44b5-8f0d-ec5c7477a6fd
Millard, David
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Boniface, Michael
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Bagust, Lisa
dcbb3d71-4848-4df3-8d0f-a0eae3999cca
Huang, Ying, Fair, Nic, Godfrey, Keith, Millard, David, Boniface, Michael and Bagust, Lisa
(2025)
Preliminary findings on UK secondary educators' perceptions of XR in health education: benefits, barriers, and content creation.
the 17th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers (ICETC), , Barcelona, Spain.
18 - 21 Sep 2025.
6 pp
.
(In Press)
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Extended Reality (XR) technologies have applications for teaching and learning across wide educational domains. In health education, XR has shown value through applications such as anatomy visualization, surgical simulation, and clinical skills development. However, these developments remain largely concentrated in higher education and professional training, with limited exploration in foundational education, despite adolescence being a critical period for shaping lifelong health behaviours. Here we begin to address this gap by investigating how UK secondary school educators perceive the potential of XR for health education. In collaboration with LifeLab, a research-based science and health literacy initiative at the University of Southampton, this study asked teachers of health-related subjects for their perception of the educational benefits of XR (focusing particularly on Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) and the current barriers to adoption across personal, technical, and institutional dimensions. At the time of publication the preliminary findings reported here are based on a sample size of 14, with data collection on-going. Preliminary findings show that while educators hold positive perceptions of XR’s value for Health Education, actual usage remains extremely limited. This reflects a ‘Usefulness–Usability Gap’ within the Technology Acceptance Model, in which the difficulty of sourcing or creating suitable XR contents, alongside some technical and institutional barriers, emerge as key obstacles to adoption.
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Final Version Preliminary Findings on UK Secondary Educators Perceptions of XR in Health Education- Benefits Barriers and Content Creation
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Accepted/In Press date: 30 June 2025
Venue - Dates:
the 17th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers (ICETC), , Barcelona, Spain, 2025-09-18 - 2025-09-21
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Local EPrints ID: 504604
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/504604
PURE UUID: 38b698d1-6660-47cb-b046-9357bc4a36b4
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Date deposited: 16 Sep 2025 16:49
Last modified: 20 Sep 2025 02:24
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Contributors
Author:
Ying Huang
Author:
Nic Fair
Author:
David Millard
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