Digital Technology for Nursing Education and Training (DTNET) project. 

Do you know that no single person has invented Virtual Reality? Many people affected the growth of VR technology, among them at least Myron Krueger, Douglas Engelbart, Morton Heilig, Ivan Sutherland, and many more. We are honoured to join the ranks of people contributing to the development of VR technologies by launching the Digital Technology for Nursing Education and Training (DTNET) project. 

The DTNET project is initiated by INTAMT and co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme, that involves a partnership consortium of six Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with vivid experience, specialized in nursing education and training, digital learning applications development and multimedia didactics. The projects Partners are: Umeå University (Sweden), P.Stradins Medical College of the University (Latvia), Pedagogical University Weingarten (Germany), UMIT – Private University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology (Austria), Utena University of Applied Sciences (Lithuania) under the coordination of INTAMT International Academy of Management and Technology (Germany).

During the 24 months, the DTNET consortium aims to create an innovative & handy set of help tools to provide the HEIs with the technological advantages of VR simulations in nursing education. We shall focus not just on the usability of the VR technology, but on learning outcomes of immersive VR. The project goal is the practical implementation of immersive technology in university teaching, including nursing curriculum integration. A number of research studies have shown that an integration of VR technology in nursing simulation-based education in the EU countries is still at its onset. This however does not pertain to the USA or Canada, where VR-based training in nursing has been actively implemented into teaching practices over the last years.

Besides the development of exemplary VR simulations for nursing skills training, one of the main priorities of the DTNET project is to support teachers to further improve their digital competences. We will be hence also focusing on building a capacity to implement VR-based teaching and learning; developing digital pedagogical competencies, enabling them to develop and use high-quality digital contents, thus delivering high quality inclusive modern education. The partnership will actively promote networking of various institutions across the EU, sharing resources, expertise and collaboration with digital technology providers and experts in educational technology and relevant pedagogical practice, to be able to develop tailor-made VR solutions adapted to individual challenges and realities.