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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2875-3461

Abstract

Many nursing education programs incorporated service learning, particularly community immersion, into the curriculum to improve students’ communication skills and foster favorable attitudes towards caring underserved populations who face health disparities delivery. However, the teaching modality in community immersion is still lecturing sessions. This traditional teaching modality could not fully address the learning preferences of the new generation of nursing students, who are enthusiastic consumers of technology and active participants in the digital world. There is a demand of innovative teaching strategies, such as game-based learning (GBL), to engage the new generation of nursing students. Unfortunately, empirical studies of exploring the potential of GBL in teaching communication skills are quite limited in literature. This study aims to bridge the research gap by developing a game-based immersive learning course to teach nursing students communication skills and foster attitudes toward providing care in underserved communities. A mixed-methods approach with convergent parallel design was used in this study. The quantitative phase employed the one-group posttest-only design and the qualitative phase used case study design. Nine students participated in this pilot study. Results showed that more than 70% of students developed favorable attitudes and over 80% gained confidence in their communication skills. Findings also revealed multifaceted influences stemming from various components of the game-based immersive learning experience, including enjoyment and motivation, self-directed and active learning, peer learning and support, community mentorship and role modeling. Game-based immersive learning has positive impact on nursing students’ communication skills and attitudes toward care in underserved communities.

First Page

197

Last Page

218

Ethics Approval

Yes

Declaration Statement

Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors' contributions LZ designed the study, collected the data, performed the data analysis, drafted the manuscript; DB collected the data; all authors reviewed and approved the final version.

Availability of data and materials The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Funding This research received no external funding.

Acknowledgements Not applicable.

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