Design and development of virtual reality environments in pharmacy education

The main purpose of the Virtual Reality Environments in Pharmacy Education (VRPE) is to examine the characteristics of a virtual reality environment to be developed for clinical pharmacy course from the perspective of instructional technologies. For this purpose, a design-based research was conducted. The data sources in the study, in which the students and instructors of the Faculty of Pharmacy and the instructors of the Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department took part as participants, are observations, interviews, documents and researcher diaries. With these tools, data for the scenario creation interface, virtual environment and scenario components that make up the VRPE environment were collected and analyzed throughout the improvement cycles. According to the findings, instructional design principles for the VRPE environment were determined. These design principles can be listed as; the determination of the components for the context and requirement in the scenario development interface, designing components in the context of usability, stylistic elements and personalization, creation of realistic scenarios of various difficulties shaped according to the user's choice, determining the characteristics of software and hardware components, designing and diversifying virtual environment elements in accordance with reality, ensuring interaction and flow, ensuring aesthetics and ergonomics in virtual environment design, providing information to the user from inside and outside the virtual environment, consideration of universal design principles, creation of retryable scenarios and designs, ensuring usability in various processes in education.The main purpose of the Virtual Reality Environments in Pharmacy Education (VRPE) is to examine the characteristics of a virtual reality environment to be developed for clinical pharmacy course from the perspective of instructional technologies. For this purpose, a design-based research was conducted. The data sources in the study, in which the students and instructors of the Faculty of Pharmacy and the instructors of the Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department took part as participants, are observations, interviews, documents and researcher diaries. With these tools, data for the scenario creation interface, virtual environment and scenario components that make up the VRPE environment were collected and analyzed throughout the improvement cycles. According to the findings, instructional design principles for the VRPE environment were determined. These design principles can be listed as; the determination of the components for the context and requirement in the scenario development interface, designing components in the context of usability, stylistic elements and personalization, creation of realistic scenarios of various difficulties shaped according to the user's choice, determining the characteristics of software and hardware components, designing and diversifying virtual environment elements in accordance with reality, ensuring interaction and flow, ensuring aesthetics and ergonomics in virtual environment design, providing information to the user from inside and outside the virtual environment, consideration of universal design principles, creation of retryable scenarios and designs, ensuring usability in various processes in education.