Assessing the virtual reality perspectives and self-directed learning skills of nursing students: A machine learning-enhanced approach.

Aim: This study aims to investigate nursing students' perspectives on virtual reality technologies and their self-directed learning skills, specifically focusing on how these variables interact and influence each other in the context of nursing education. We also discern potential disparities in these skills based on descriptive characteristics, using both traditional statistical and advanced machine learning approaches for a comprehensive analysis.

Background: Rapid developments in technology, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, have brought virtual reality technologies to the forefront of nursing education. However, there is a gap in understanding how nursing students' perceptions of these technological relate to their development of self-directed learning skills.

Design: A descriptive and cross-sectional study design is employed to both quantify nursing students' perspectives on virtual reality in their education and assess their self-directed learning skills. This approach integrates traditional statistical methods with advanced machine learning techniques, with the intention of offering a comprehensive and nuanced analysis to inform future teaching strategies in nursing.

Methods: The study used a blend of survey scales and a tree-based machine learning model to measure and analyze nursing students' views, attitudes and self-directed learning levels. This dual approach allows for a more detailed assessment of the factors influencing self-directed learning abilities. Traditional statistical techniques were also applied to assess the reliability of the machine learning findings.

Results: Findings reveal that nursing students generally held positive views towards virtual reality technologies and exhibited a high level of self-directed learning skills. Notable differences in self-directed learning skills were influenced by gender on the overall scale (p <0.001), with male students scoring higher than their female counterparts in both specific sub-dimensions and on the overall scale, but not by academic year. The machine learning analysis provided deeper insights into these variations, highlighting subtle distinctions in student demographics that traditional statistical methods did not fully capture.

Conclusions: The study offers valuable insights into interconnected nature of nursing students' views on virtual reality technologies and their self-directed learning skills. The results support the integration of virtual reality in nursing curriculum programs and underscore the importance of customizing teaching strategies based on insights gained from machine learning analyses. This approach has the potential to substantially improve both the learning experience and the overall quality of nursing education.