Evaluation of the Use of a 360° Immersive Visit of the Organic Chemistry Practical Laboratory for Pharmacy Students

We report the implementation of a new pedagogical virtual tool within the Institut des Sciences Pharmaceutiques et Biologiques (ISPB) of Lyon for second-year pharmacy students. This tool provides a 360 degrees immersive visit to the actual chemistry practical laboratory, allowing students to explore the room before attending the practical class in a video game-like fashion. The originality of this tool lies on the variety of pedagogical contents embedded in the 360 degrees visit, such as 2D videos, lightboard videos, and animation videos. Evaluations of this immersive visit on learning, motivation, and autonomy of pharmacy students have been assessed by the students through online feedback. The positive results obtained demonstrated the usefulness of this tool in improving learning and motivation and fostering increased autonomy during practical classes. A more quantitative analysis was employed to examine the effect of watching the video before practical classes on the students' autonomy level during the practical classes. The statistical test revealed a significant improvement in autonomy for students who watched the video before attending practical classes compared to those who did not. We hope this work will be beneficial to teaching researchers in pharmacy faculties seeking to bring innovation to their teaching methods.