Implementation of Therapeutic Virtual Reality Into Psychiatric Care: Clinicians' and Service Managers' Perspectives

Objectives: Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a highly promising tool for assessing and treating a range of mental illnesses. However, little is known about the perspectives of key stakeholders in mental healthcare, whose support will be critical for its successful implementation into routine clinical practise. This study aimed to explore the perspectives of staff working in the private mental health sector around the use of therapeutic VR, including potential implementation barriers and facilitators.Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with cross-disciplinary clinicians (n = 14) and service managers (n = 5), aged 28–70 years working in a major private mental health hospital in Victoria, Australia. Transcripts were analysed using general inductive coding to allow themes to naturally emerge.Results: Three major themes were identified: clinical factors (four subthemes), organisational factors (five subthemes), and professional factors (three subthemes). The themes encompassed enabling factors and potential barriers that need to be addressed for successful implementation of VR. Clinical factors highlighted the influence of knowledge or perceptions about appropriate clinical applications, therapeutic efficacy, safety and ethical concerns, and patient engagement. Organisational factors emphasised the importance of service contexts, including having a strong business case, stakeholder planning, recruitment of local opinion leaders to champion change, and an understanding of resourcing challenges. Professional factors highlighted the need for education and training for staff, and the influence of staff attitudes towards technology and perceived usability of VR.Conclusions: In addition to enabling factors, potential implementation barriers of therapeutic VR were identified, including resourcing constraints, safety and ethical concerns, negative staff attitudes towards technology and VR system limitations. Future dissemination should focus on addressing knowledge and skills gaps and attitudinal barriers through development of clinical guidelines, training programs, and implementation resources (e.g., adoption decision tools, consultation opportunities).

Emergency remote learning acceptance among higher education students during COVID-19 pandemic

The current study investigates how attitudes towards digital transformation and personal innovativeness affect the acceptance of emergency remote learning in the COVID-19 pandemic environment. The pandemic has affected all aspects of societies across the globe, including higher education that was also a significant push-up factor for the digital transformation of higher education. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting emergency remote learning acceptance among the higher education students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The results presented in this paper gained from a study carried out among higher education students in BiH cover the period of April – July 2020 via the open-source platform. The study focused on the students’ attitude towards a digital transformation is a significant factor in accepting emergency remote learning. Also, the personal innovativeness score has proven to be a crucial factor for adopting this new learning setting, i.e., more innovative students have a greater emergency remote learning acceptance than students with a lower personal innovativeness score. Hence, this study pinpoints the necessity of changing the attitudes towards technology applications in education. It would increase the usage of remote learning services and provide students with knowledge and skills for the new labour market

Attitude Of Technology And Their Impact On Interest Of Internet Banking

This study aims to determine the effect of perceived benefits, ease of use and trust in the attitude of using technology and its impact on the intention to use Internet Banking (Empirical Study: Customers of PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk, Gianyar Branch). PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk as one of the largest banks with branches in every city and units in almost every sub-district level, has become one of the banks used as customers to make savings and loans and other transactions. The data used are primary data. D ata primary obtained from questionnaires distributed to the Customer PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk Gianyar Branch. The data analysis technique used is regression analysis multiple linear . The results showed that perceived usefulness, ease of use and trust had an effect on attitudes towards technology use. Furthermore, the attitude of using technology affects the interest in repeated use of internet banking.

NZ school librarians, technology leaders?

<p>The purpose of this qualitative research study is to examine what role and views New Zealand school librarians currently have within their schools as technology leaders. At a time of technological developments in education, with both access to and implementation of ICT within school curriculums, what aids and hinders school librarian’s position as a technology manager? A variety of Auckland secondary schools were approached requesting a 30-60 minute interview with one of their librarians. Of the ones that agreed eight semi-structured interviews took place. The librarians were asked 14 open ended questions, some which were investigated further when necessary, and their answers were recorded, transcribed and results were drawn from their information. My results found that the majority of librarians felt well supported by their colleagues. Each school, had its own distinct hierarchy that effected the way librarians conducted their jobs and the place they had. Most librarians felt that their role was not meant to be a “technology leader” per-say, but rather someone that would incorporate it within the library to make the library a useful resource. Some schools had specific positions for their librarians to partake in technology leadership. This made the library more of an ICT focus for the school. Overall the librarians all had a variety of experiences, mostly stemming from the hierarchical dynamics within the schools and their own education in the library field. The implication for schools and their librarians, from this research may aid in considering the hierarchical set up their school currently has, how librarians view their role and what is a ‘norm’ versus alternative ideas. I think the discovery also reveals the various attitudes towards technology. This research may also increase awareness of the possible roles for school librarians in the future.</p>

NZ school librarians, technology leaders?

<p>The purpose of this qualitative research study is to examine what role and views New Zealand school librarians currently have within their schools as technology leaders. At a time of technological developments in education, with both access to and implementation of ICT within school curriculums, what aids and hinders school librarian’s position as a technology manager? A variety of Auckland secondary schools were approached requesting a 30-60 minute interview with one of their librarians. Of the ones that agreed eight semi-structured interviews took place. The librarians were asked 14 open ended questions, some which were investigated further when necessary, and their answers were recorded, transcribed and results were drawn from their information. My results found that the majority of librarians felt well supported by their colleagues. Each school, had its own distinct hierarchy that effected the way librarians conducted their jobs and the place they had. Most librarians felt that their role was not meant to be a “technology leader” per-say, but rather someone that would incorporate it within the library to make the library a useful resource. Some schools had specific positions for their librarians to partake in technology leadership. This made the library more of an ICT focus for the school. Overall the librarians all had a variety of experiences, mostly stemming from the hierarchical dynamics within the schools and their own education in the library field. The implication for schools and their librarians, from this research may aid in considering the hierarchical set up their school currently has, how librarians view their role and what is a ‘norm’ versus alternative ideas. I think the discovery also reveals the various attitudes towards technology. This research may also increase awareness of the possible roles for school librarians in the future.</p>

Using an Technology Readiness Model to Understand Perceived Usefulness of Learning in the Covid-19 Era

The use of new technology for educators makes it difficult for educators to update existing learning, knowledge skills, and various knowledge. However, the application of technology to the attitude of educators in adopting new technology is joined with the covid-19 pandemic, which requires educators to prepare technology. Technology readiness (TR) becomes a model in preparing technology that characterizes individuals using and adopting new technologies to achieve the desired goals. Perceived usefulness is an essential indicator of the attitude we take in the use of specific technologies. The purpose of this study was to analyze the TR of perceived usefulness in learning in the Covid-19 era. This research focuses on providing a general understanding and awareness of the importance of TR in everyday life. This type of research is quantitative, using univariate analysis and simple linear regression. This research design includes correlational research. The number of samples was 215 students were involved. The data collection tool uses an online questionnaire. The result is that school teacher education students in Yogyakarta have high TR abilities and positively affect perceived usefulness. This research implies that educators or stakeholders realize the importance of TR and technology services by encouraging positive attitudes towards technology to reduce reluctance to use technology.

Does Exposure to Animal Cognition Research Influence the Zoo Visitor Experience?

Zoos average about 183 million visitors per year, which makes them a major source for educating the public due to the diverse and wide-ranging demographic that visit. Zoos are increasingly a source of scientific research in a variety of subfields, including animal cognition, although much of this research takes place behind the scenes. Bringing this research to the public perspective has the potential to increase engagement of zoo visitors. However, it is not always possible to show live research, but videos have been found to be an effective educational approach in other domains. Here, we presented a brief video illustrating cognitive research involving sun bears at Zoo Atlanta to determine the potential effect on visitors. We measured several aspects of visitor behavior (stay time and actual behaviors in the exhibit), attitudes (towards both animal research and educational technology), and knowledge gained at the exhibit. We also presented a control video that focused on sun bear enrichment to tease out whether potential effects on visitors were related to the research focus of the video, or merely an effect of a video playing in the exhibit space. Visitor behavior, attitudes, and knowledge were determined by observing a randomly selected visitor’s behavior throughout their time in the exhibit space, and then requesting completion of a survey when they exited the exhibit (N = 148). We compared various aspects of behavior, attitudes, and knowledge across the Scientific Video, Enrichment Video, and No Video conditions. There were no differences between the Scientific Video and the Enrichment Video conditions; however, some differences were found between visitors who experienced a video during their visit (scientific or enrichment video) versus those who did not. Attitudes towards technology in the exhibit space were generally positive. There was also a significant correlation between visitor stay time (overall time spent in the exhibit space) and knowledge gained. Visitors learning about research in zoos remains important, but it is unclear if a video is a sufficient means to share that information.

Investigation of secondary school students' attitude towards technology and their STEM perceptions: Turkey sample

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is an approach that develops 21st century skills such as career choice in science and engineering, entrepreneurship, innovation, creative and critical thinking. The acronym STEM stands for the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. When looking from the past to the present, it has been observed that there has been an increase in STEM studies. However, there was no study which was conducted on STEM education in Turkey mostly consisted of studies which aimed at determining the interests, attitudes and achievements of students and prospective teachers, and there was no study on the relationship between students' tendencies to technology in STEM education and their STEM perceptions. It is necessary for societies that can rapidly keep up with developing technology and innovations Therefore, in this study, it was aimed to examine the relationship between the perceptions of secondary school students towards STEM fields, determining their attitudes towards technology, students' attitudes towards technology and its use in lessons, and the total perception levels of STEM fields and sub-dimensions. The study was completed in the fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. The data of the study were analyzed by quantitative survey model. In the study, ‘Attitude towards Technology Scale’ and ‘STEM Perception Scale’ were used as data collection tools. In the tests applied, the data were analyzed using the Independent Sample t-test, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Regression Analysis. According to data analysis and findings, it was determined that there was a moderately significant negative relationship between the students' attitude level towards technology, and the STEM perception level. In the light of the findings, the importance of STEM education was emphasized and recommendations were made to program designers, researchers and practitioners on this subject.