Incorporation of a Social Virtual Reality Platform into the Residency Recruitment Season

Abstract

Rationale and objectives: The Covid-19 pandemic ushered a sudden need for residency programs to develop innovative socially distant and remote approaches to effectively promote their program. Here we describe our experience using the social virtual reality (VR) platform Mozilla Hubs for the pre-interview social during the 2020-2021 radiology residency virtual recruitment season, provide results of a survey sent to assess applicants' attitudes towards the VR pre-interview social, and outline additional use-cases for the emerging technology.

Materials and methods: A VR Meeting Hall dedicated to the pre-interview social was designed in Mozilla Hubs. To assess applicants' impressions of the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social, applicants were sent an optional web-based survey. Survey respondents were asked to respond to a series of eleven statements using a five-point Likert scale of perceived agreement: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Statements were designed to gauge applicants' attitudes towards the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social and its usefulness in helping them learn about the residency program, particularly in comparison with pre-interview socials held on conventional video conferencing software (CVCS).

Results: Of the 120 residency applicants invited to the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social, 111 (93%) attended. Of these, 68 (61%) participated in the anonymous survey. Most applicants reported a better overall experience with Mozilla Hubs compared to CVCS (47/68, 69%), with 10% (7/68) reporting a worse overall experience, and 21% (14/68) neutral. Most applicants reported the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social allowed them to better assess residency culture than did pre-interview socials using CVCS (41/68, 60%). Seventy-two percent of applicants reported that the Mozilla Hubs pre-interview social positively impacted their decision to strongly consider the residency program (49/68).

Conclusion: Radiology residency applicants overall preferred a pre-interview social hosted on a social VR platform, Mozilla Hubs, compared to those hosted on CVCS. Applicants reported the use of a social VR platform reflected positively on the residency and positively impacted their decision to strongly consider the program.

Keywords: Recruitment; Residency; Social VR; Virtual reality.

Figure 1

Bird's eye view of the Mozilla Hubs VR Meeting Hall designed for the pre-interview social from the (a) isometric and (b) top-down perspectives. (Color version of figure is available online.)

Figure 2

Users’ perspective of the VR Meeting Hall designed for the pre-interview social. (a) View of the welcome area, where users logging in to the pre-interview social would appear and be greeted by residents. (b) View of the Main Room, featuring a welcome banner positioned over a 3D model of a city skyline, images of the medical center, and entrances to the Resident Life and Residency Program rooms. (c) View of the Resident Life room, featuring photographs of resident social events, graduation day ceremonies, extracurricular gatherings, and a map of the city with clinical sites annotated for ease of reference. (d) View of the Residency Program room, featuring the names and photographs of the residency program leadership and clickable links to the residency program website and social media pages. (Color version of figure is available online.)

Figure 3

Fig. 3. Example images of the VR Meeting Hall during use (usernames blurred for anonymity). (a) Multiple small groups of 2-3 users each forming and conversing in the welcome area as applicants log in and residents greet them. (b) A large group of users forming a circle in the Main Room, having coalesced from smaller substituent groups to discuss of topic of collective interest. (c) Users participating in the Trivia session in the Main Room. Note that all users are looking toward the large display temporarily positioned in the Main Room for all to see and follow along. (Color version of figure is available online.)