Effect of different teaching/learning approaches using virtual patients on student’s situational interest and cognitive load: a comparative study

BACKGROUND: Virtual Patients (VPs) have been receiving considerable attention in medical education as an authentic learning and teaching approach. The study aimed to evaluate the effect of using different approaches of conduction of virtual patients (VPs) on students’ cognitive load and situational interest. METHODS: The study is an experimental study. Two different cohorts have participated during the academic year 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The first cohort (Group 1) was exposed to a lecture followed by an independent VPs session, and the second cohort (Group 2) was exposed to a collaborative VPs session. The situational interest and Cognitive load were compared between the two groups. All sessions are about one topic related to maxillofacial trauma. RESULTS: Findings showed that there was no significant difference between the median score of the situational interest at repeated time points during the Collaborative VPs (Group 2). However, in group 1, there was a significant difference between the median score of situational interest at repeated time points during independent VPs where the lowest score was found to be at the end of the session. Also, results showed that the collaborative VPs (Group 2) showed a high median score of situational interest than both lecture and independent VPs (Group 1). Furthermore, the study showed that there is no significant difference in the intrinsic cognitive load among the three sessions. However, the extraneous cognitive load was low in collaborative VPs (Group 2) than in both lecture and independent VPs sessions (Group 1). CONCLUSION: The use of VPs in a collaborative interactive learning activity is more effective than its use as an independent learning activity in enhancing students’ situational interest and reducing cognitive load. However, giving independent VPs after the lecture with the same topic is considered a limitation of the study as this can affect the situational interest of the students by filling their gab of knowledge. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03831-8.