This study explored graduate nursing students’ views of using smart glasses in nursing healthcare following a brief intervention to promote nursing care in hyperglycemia treatment. Participants generally highly emphasized the novelty, ease of use, and enjoyable learning experience of smart glasses.
Interactive, immersive environments such as AR, VR and XR have generally created positive emotions in users. Participants generally emphasized the novelty, ease of use, and enjoyable learning experience of XR. In one study, users felt more positive emotions than in computer-based simulations (17). Another study stated that nursing students showed great interest in their smart glasses experience and were encouraged to reduce their anxiety (18). Although the immersive nature of smart glasses enhances experiences in many contexts, participants said that they feel worried and anxious. We attribute this to the fact that smart glasses technology is new, and the participants need to gain more knowledge of this technology.
Smart glasses technology is a rich, interactive, and engaging educational strategy supporting experiential learning (19). In our study, participants emphasized their experience as an immersive, fun learning experience. In studies, students stated that using smart glasses technology to view 3D structures seems more motivating and exciting than traditional methods such as books (20, 21). An opposing view stated that the immersive experience of being in a simulated reality overshadowed the acquisition of cognitive skills. For example, Moesgaard et al. (2015) described it as the place where study participants reported that they were "too fascinated by the [virtual] environment to notice the information presented to them." (22). Even though one participant in our study found the environment he experienced gripping, the statement, "When I turned my head to a different place, the information continued to come in visual and written information, and this helped me to break away from the flow," showed that it was immersive and focused on the game. In addition, the participants stated that the adaptation to smart glasses technology is comfortable. In this case, it can be associated with the fact that we did not put any interaction area in the game. Because smart glasses technologies are costly in Turkey, this study does not receive financial support. However, given the rapid development in the field, we expect the smart glasses hardware landscape in our country to change shortly.
Smart glasses have disadvantages, such as motion sickness and nausea (23). Whether the symptoms of motion sickness and nausea are related to beginners' attempts to become familiar with the technology or whether these persist over the long term and could potentially interfere with learning or education. In our study, a few said they used glasses and experienced environmental nausea. Effects may differ as AR devices combine real and virtual environments; this should reduce adverse health effects such as blurred vision and disorientation in VR applications (24).
Smart glasses technologies are costly, making it difficult to use the content produced for trainers (23). Although the participants praised the benefits of these technologies, they stated that access was difficult due to their price. High costs are a barrier to its use for independent study at home, for example, the virtual dissection table costing. For some technologies, there is a potential to reduce costs owing to the capacity of scale (25). Despite the positive feedback for these technologies, there are still unanswered questions about who will bear these costs. Therefore, cost-effectiveness should be considered when using these technologies.
Participants believed that smart glasses had a future in nursing care and recommended their use in improving the care and treatment process. Because the concept of using immersive technology in nursing education was relatively new, it was easier for researchers to generate new ideas and bring innovations and contributions to the field. The research interests of many researchers regarding smart glasses technology are mostly concepts, features, technical principles, equipment, application situations in different fields, current problems, and prospects. Smart glasses are now integrated into the educational field with integration, deep interaction, and coexistence of different time and space objects (26). In addition to skill areas such as classroom nursing education, clinical nursing, intensive care nursing, and intravenous procedures, it shows obvious technical advantages in the orientation process of new nurses and has unlimited potential development and application areas.
While respondents generally described smart glasses as a fun visual design, they found the technology suitable for younger demographics and too mobile for middle-aged adults. Technology use, exposure, and unfamiliarity can affect opinions about design (26). In addition, the personal differences of individuals in the learning environment can differentiate the design evaluations in the experience environment, which is quite normal.
Limitations
The reason for this was that the game developed for smart glasses was about diabetes. Therefore, a purposive sample was used, and students enrolled in the internal medicine nursing graduate programme were included in the study.