Immersive learning practices using Fynd CORE
As part of the GCA Programme, five immersive learning exercises have been developed using Fynd CORE. Fynd CORE is ……………. (linkki ja kuvaus?)
The exercises address challenging and realistic situations that healthcare professionals may encounter when supporting older people living at home.
The exercises combine different forms of immersive learning. In one exercise, students meet remotely in a shared virtual space to analyze and discuss previously viewed video cases. In the other exercises, students enter simulated homes and interact with virtual patients in situations involving medication, nutrition, mental health, quality of life, mobility, and home safety.
The purpose is not primarily to teach isolated technical procedures. Instead, Fynd CORE provides a safe environment for practicing observation, communication, clinical reasoning, ethical decision-making, person-centered care, and professional collaboration.
A particularly important aspect of the virtual home visits is that the environment itself becomes part of the learning experience. Students are encouraged to observe not only what the virtual patient says, but also what the home, the person’s appearance, and the surrounding objects may reveal about their health, well-being, and ability to cope with everyday life.
The five exercises can be integrated into geriatric nursing education individually or used together as a broader immersive learning pathway. They can also provide a model for developing new scenarios adapted to different European educational, cultural, and healthcare contexts.
Course materials
Course Description
The first exercise uses Fynd CORE as a shared virtual meeting and reflection environment.
Before entering the virtual session, students watch four different video-based example cases related to financial abuse and ethical concerns involving older people. The videos provide situations that students can observe and interpret individually before meeting their peers.
Students then enter Fynd CORE remotely from different locations and meet as avatars in the same virtual space. Together, they review the four cases, compare their observations, discuss potential warning signs, and consider how healthcare professionals should respond.
The immersive element therefore does not replace the video material. Instead, Fynd CORE creates a collaborative learning space around the cases, allowing geographically separated learners to meet, discuss, reflect, and learn from each other’s interpretations.
Learning objectives
After completing the exercise, the learner should be able to:
• Recognize potential indicators of financial abuse or exploitation.
• Identify ethical concerns in situations where there may not be one obvious answer.
• Distinguish observations from assumptions.
• Discuss sensitive financial and personal matters professionally.
• Compare different interpretations of the same situation.
• Explain and justify their professional reasoning.
• Learn from the perspectives of other students.
• Consider appropriate follow-up actions and support.
Pedagogical approach
The exercise combines case-based learning, collaborative learning, reflection, and immersive remote learning.
The four video cases first allow students to form their own interpretations. The virtual meeting then exposes them to alternative perspectives.
This is particularly relevant for ethical situations because learners may notice different details or reach different conclusions based on the same information.
The teacher can act as a facilitator rather than simply providing the “correct” answer.
Practical Implementation
A suggested learning sequence is:
Watch four video cases individually → Enter Fynd CORE → Meet remotely in the virtual space → Discuss each case → Compare observations and decisions → Teacher-facilitated reflection
Discussion can be supported with questions such as:
What made you concerned? What did you observe rather than assume? Did another student’s interpretation change your understanding of the case? How
would you approach the older person? What would you do next in professional practice?
Course Description
The second exercise places the student inside the virtual home of an older patient called Karen.
Instead of studying medication management only through written cases, the learner experiences a simulated home visit and meets Karen as a virtual avatar.
The student engages directly with Karen and goes through her current medication with her. The learner must communicate with the patient, ask relevant questions, listen to her responses, and build an understanding of how she is currently managing her medication.
The purpose is to make medication review feel like a patient encounter rather than an information retrieval exercise.
Learning objectives
The learner should be able to:
• Gather relevant information about an older person’s medication.
• Conduct a structured medication-related conversation.
• Identify potential medication-related concerns.
• Explore how the patient understands and uses their medication.
• Recognize when additional information or professional assessment may be required.
Pedagogical approach
The scenario uses experiential, scenario-based, and person-centered leaning
Students aren’t simply asked, “What would you ask Karen?” They are placed in Karen’s home and expected to actually conduct the interaction.
The immersive scenario therefore creates an opportunity to practice both clinical reasoning and communication.
Practical implementation
The exercise can be introduced after theoretical teaching on medication management in older people.
The student enters Karen’s virtual home and receives a professional task related to reviewing her current medication. During the encounter, the learner talks with Karen and gathers the information they consider relevant. Afterwards, students can compare:
• What information they considered important.
• What concerns they identified.
• What additional information they would need.
• What they would recommend as the next step.
The instructor can use these differences as material for a structured debriefing.
Course description
The third scenario is a virtual home visit to an older patient called Maria.
The learner enters Maria’s home and engages in a conversation with her virtual avatar about nutrition, eating habits, and changes that may be affecting her nutritional status.
The scenario encourages students to approach nutrition as more than simply asking what a person eats. They need to communicate with Maria and build an understanding of her everyday situation.
The home setting makes the encounter more contextual than a traditional classroom case: the student is visiting Maria as a person in her own living environment, rather than assessing an abstract “patient case.”
Learning objectives
The learner should be able to:
• Recognize possible indicators of nutritional risk.
• Explore possible reasons for reduced food intake or weight loss.
• Consider physical, psychological, social, and environmental influences on nutrition.
• Gather relevant information through conversation.
• Identify where additional assessment may be required.
• Suggest appropriate follow-up actions.
Pedagogical approach
The exercise supports holistic assessment, experiential learning, and person-centered care.
Rather than presenting the learner with all relevant facts in advance, the scenario requires the student to actively discover information through interaction.
This helps develop an important professional skill:
Knowing what information you still need and knowing how to obtain it from the patient.
Practical implementation
Students enter Maria’s virtual home with a defined professional objective but without necessarily knowing everything about her situation.
They conduct the conversation and afterwards document or discuss their findings.
The debrief can explore:
What did Maria tell you? What did you still need to know? What could be contributing to her nutritional situation? Which questions were easy or difficult to ask? At what point would you involve another healthcare professional?
Course Description
The fourth exercise is intentionally designed to create a stronger emotional and environmental experience.
The learner makes a virtual home visit to an older patient called Niko.
When entering Niko’s home, the student immediately discovers that the environment is in very poor condition. The home is dirty and has clearly not been properly maintained. Niko is also struggling with his own personal hygiene.
These environmental details are deliberately used to communicate something about Niko’s situation before he has explained it himself.
The learner must recognize that the condition of the home may be connected to a much broader decline in Niko’s mental health, functioning, motivation, and quality of life.
The student then talks with Niko’s virtual avatar to understand how he is coping, how serious his situation has become, and how much care or additional support he may need.
Learning objectives
The learner should be able to:
• Recognize possible signs of depression and declining quality of life.
• Observe environmental indicators of deteriorating well-being.
• Connect changes in personal hygiene and home maintenance with possible changes in functional or psychological health.
• Discuss mood and everyday coping sensitively.
• Assess the person’s possible need for additional care or support.
• Avoid making conclusions based solely on the appearance of the environment.
• Consider mental, physical, functional, and social factors together.
Pedagogical approach
This scenario makes particularly strong use of environmental storytelling and situated learning.
The virtual home isn’t simply a background. It communicates information.
The learner first experiences the condition of Niko’s home and then has to determine what those observations might mean through conversation with the patient.
This creates an important distinction between:
Observation → Interpretation → Conversation → Assessment
The learner should not automatically conclude that a dirty home means depression. Instead, the environment creates reasons to investigate further.
Practical implementation
Students can initially be given only limited information about Niko.
They enter the home, observe the environment, meet Niko, and conduct their assessment.
Afterwards, the debrief should explore both clinical reasoning and emotional response:
What was your first impression when you entered the home? Did that influence how you approached Niko? What observations suggested that he may not be coping?
How did you explore these concerns without judging him? What additional support might he require?
This makes the exercise particularly useful for teaching that a home visit involves seeing the whole person and their living situation, not simply completing a checklist.
Course description
The fifth scenario takes place in the virtual home of Mr. Jönssön, an older person experiencing mobility difficulties.
His home has intentionally been designed to contain multiple features that may make everyday movement challenging and increase the possibility of falling.
Students enter the home and must assess the situation from the perspective of an older person with reduced mobility.
The learner needs to combine three sources of information:
Mr. Jönssön’s condition + what he tells them + what they observe in his home.
This transforms fall-risk education from identifying hazards in photographs or checklists into an immersive assessment of a person’s actual living environment.
Learning objectives
The learner should be able to:
• Identify potential fall risks within a home.
• Observe how environmental conditions interact with reduced mobility.
• Assess factors affecting safe independent living.
• Prioritize risks rather than simply list hazards.
• Recommend realistic preventive measures.
• Consider assistive devices, environmental modifications, or additional support where appropriate.
• Balance safety with the person’s independence and autonomy.
Pedagogical approach
The exercise uses situated learning, environmental observation, problem-based learning, and person-centered assessment.
Immersion is particularly valuable because learners experience the environment spatially. They can move through the virtual home and consider how the same space may be experienced very differently by someone with mobility limitations.
The pedagogical challenge is not simply:
“Find everything that could cause a fall.”
Instead, learners should consider:
Which risks are most important for this particular person, and what could realistically be changed while allowing him to continue living independently?
Practical implementation
The student enters Mr. Jönssön’s home, explores the environment, communicates with him, identifies relevant risks, and develops recommendations.
After the exercise, learners can compare their assessments.
The instructor can ask:
Which hazards did you notice first? Which presented the greatest risk specifically for Mr. Jönssön? What would you change immediately? What could be improved longer term? How would you discuss those changes with him while respecting his independence?
Common pedagogical model for the five exercises
Although the scenarios address different topics, they share a common educational philosophy:
1. Preparation: Students receive relevant theoretical knowledge and understand their professional role.
2. Experience: Students either analyze cases collaboratively in a shared Fynd CORE environment or enter an immersive virtual home and encounter a virtual patient.
3. Observation and Interaction: Learners actively gather information rather than receiving a complete description of the case.
4. Clinical and Ethical Reasoning: Students interpret what they have observed, identify missing information, and determine possible actions.
5. Reflection and Debriefing: Students explain their decisions and compare approaches with peers and instructors.
6. Transfer to Professional Practice: Finally, students consider: “How would I use what I learned when encountering a similar situation with a real older person?”
Why immersive virtual reality adds value?
The five scenarios demonstrate several different ways immersive technology can contribute to geriatric education.
A traditional written case describes the environment to the learner: “The patient’s home is untidy and there may be fall hazards.” An immersive scenario can instead allow the learner to enter the home, notice—or fail to notice—the situation themselves, interact with the patient, and decide what information is relevant. This shifts the learning process from receiving information toward discovering, interpreting, communicating, and making professional decisions.
Fynd CORE also allows situations that may be difficult, sensitive, or impractical to reproduce repeatedly with real patients to be practiced in a controlled environment. Students can encounter the same underlying learning objectives, discuss different approaches, make mistakes without affecting a real patient, and reflect on their performance afterwards.
These five existing scenarios can serve as reference examples for other European education providers implementing the GCA Programme.
The objective does not need to be to reproduce every scenario identically. Instead, the exercises demonstrate a reusable pedagogical model that can be adapted to different healthcare systems and cultures.
When adapting the scenarios, institutions should consider:
- Language and communication style.
- Cultural differences in older people’s living environments.
- National medication practices.
- Safeguarding and financial abuse procedures.
- Available health and social care services.
- Professional responsibilities and referral pathways.
- National approaches to nutritional and mental health assessment.
- Fall prevention practices.
- Curriculum level and expected learner competence.
The virtual patient’s story, home, dialogue, and available choices can therefore be localized while maintaining the same core learning objectives and pedagogical structure.
Together, these five exercises demonstrate how Fynd CORE can provide the immersive practice layer of the GCA Programme: Theory provides knowledge → virtual scenarios create experience → interaction develops professional skills → reflection turns experience into learning → repeated practice builds competence.