Virtual Reality to Cope With Academic Stress

The new technologies may facilitate the teaching-learning process through the ubiquitous and active approach. However, stress from academic exams remains being high among undergraduate students. Although new technologies could be useful to simulate and control academic stressful situations through immersive virtual reality, no studies to date have evaluated its effectiveness. This study is designed to evaluate the effects of a virtual reality program to visualize stressful academic situations like exams on the level of psychological and physiological stress and academic performance of Physiotherapy and Nursing undergraduate students. To this end, an experimental study with two experimental groups and one control group is designed: experimental group 1 (EG1) will complete a 4-weeks program of guided visualization of exams through immersive virtual reality; experimental group 2 (EG2) will complete a 4-weeks program of traditional guided visualization of exams (through audio); control group (CG) will not receive any visualization program, as the most habitual strategy to cope with exams among students. Before and after the intervention period, all students will fulfill an online questionnaire to inform about their level of academic stress (SISCO inventory) and perceived stress from the last month (Perceived Stress Scale). Also, just before starting the exam they will have been visualizing, level of stress (0 to 10 points), blood pressure (mmHg), maximal heart rate (ppm) and salivary cortisol level will be assessed in all students. Qualifications of the exam will be also collected. Intra-group differences and between-group differences at post-intervention time will be obtained.