“They’re going to be using it more and more, so let’s teach them to use it responsibly,” said Nate Kincaid, associate professor of nursing at Cedarville University.
Cedarville’s nursing program received two VR headsets and access to training platforms through a grant from Bodyswaps, a London-based software company specializing in soft skills development using AI and VR.
“It focuses on soft skills, which I think a lot of people can use help with,” Kincaid said. “Students get exposure to things they haven’t seen. That initial shock factor, that might be a lot for them.”
Soft skills are traits that enable someone to interact effectively with others, such as good verbal communication and empathy.
Using a headset and two hand controllers, students interact with computer-generated patients in scenarios they will encounter every day in the medical field.
AI generates scenarios ranging from an initial medical visit to a healthcare professional delivering bad news, Kincaid said.
The program grades on factors such as eye contact, phrasing and empathy, and allows students to act in the patient role to see and hear how they performed.
Scenario parameters can be changed to expose students to people from varying geographic, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.
Dr. Yi-Hui Lee, faculty professor at Wright State University’s college of nursing, spent her summer in multiple conferences discussing how AI is reshaping various fields across higher learning institutions and in the healthcare workforce.
Tailoring the lessons
Lee said AI is creating an environment that allows students to have a more individualized learning experience, and frees healthcare professionals’ time from paperwork and administrative duties.
“In the future, with AI’s help, we can have more personalized learning and personalized diagnoses,” Lee said.
Professors are using AI to create learning plans tailored to individual student needs.
It can analyze a student’s progress, identify areas of weakness, and provide additional training opportunities without a professor having to create plans for each student.
In the field, AI tools such as voice recording and instant transcription, data summarization and telehealth allow healthcare providers to spend more time interacting directly with patients instead of taking notes or reviewing charts.
Data analysis functions help pinpoint issues faster and more accurately, leading to better patient outcomes.
“Healthcare providers can intercede earlier, make healthcare predictive instead of reactive,” Lee said.
She said she sees AI helping address administrative as well as medical problems.
The national shortage of nurses puts a burden on managers trying to improve patient outcomes, she said, something AI can help alleviate.
“We look at how to help our nursing leaders, how to have the best in scheduling to address problems like nursing burnout,” Lee said.
But AI is not without limits, she warned.
Biases in data sets used to program AI and ethical considerations about proposed treatments require human intervention.
A cancer treatment proposed from data gathered from a 70 percent white population may not be the best option for a minority patient, she said as an example.
AI will also suggest treatments without taking into consideration family preferences or concerns.
“It’s a tool. It’s not to replace us,” Lee said. “Something suggested by AI may not be ethical (to a patient or family).”
Sinclair Community College this year launched a $5 million, three-year strategic initiative, the AI Excellence Institute, designed to scale AI innovation in every classroom across the college.
“We’re looking at it like students need direct AI training regardless of what discipline they’re studying,” said Christi Amato, dean of eLearning.
Amato likens the integration of AI into education to the onset of the internet in colleges in the early 1990s.
While information was available at never-before-seen levels, students had to learn not to take everything they found online at face value.
“You have the obligation as a critical thinker to ask where did that information come from,” Amato said.
Sinclair’s health sciences program uses AI to create real-world simulations at no risk to real people.
Program director Wendy Moore said students can practice everything from monitoring mothers and babies during childbirth to inserting IVs while in a moving ambulance before ever setting foot in a hospital or doctor’s office.
“All of us love that hands-on. You can read a book all day but it doesn’t give that (real life experience),” Moore said.
The University of Dayton’s nursing program uses Shadow Health Digital Clinical Experience software in its courses.
A university spokesperson said the software provides an immersive virtual learning environment that helps students practice and enhance their communication, critical thinking, assessment and documentation skills in a realistic setting.
Manufacturing also using AI, VR
At Miami University, a $1.5 million grant from the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation is helping launch a Safety Immersion and Gamified Hazard Training (SIGHT) for those in manufacturing.
“The Farmer School of Business and the (new) Advanced Manufacturing Workforce and Innovation Hub in Hamilton are collaborating to revolutionize safety training for Ohio’s manufacturing workers. The innovative project combines Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to reduce preventable workplace injuries across one of Ohio’s largest employment sectors,“ states a release from the college.
Credit: Scott Kissell
Credit: Scott Kissell
The AI and VR driven education is part of the university’s new AM Hub, which opens in 2026 as part of the Polytechnic Campus through MiamiTHRIVE, an initiative that looks at streamlining the college’s programs and operational processes an resources.
Mohammed Mayyas, chair and professor of Engineering Technology, associate dean for Strategic Initiatives, and a driving force behind the new Hub, highlighted the Hub’s pivotal role in advancing the SIGHT initiative.
“The AM Hub will serve as a hands-on, interdisciplinary ecosystem where students, faculty, and industry partners collaborate to apply and refine AI-powered safety technologies in real manufacturing settings,” Mayyas said. “It bridges education, innovation, and workforce development — ensuring our region remains competitive and our workforce is both highly skilled and safety-conscious.”
SIGHT will deliver safety training through two integrated programs — a VR training platform that uses generative AI to create customized hazard simulations based on a worker’s specific work environment, and AR coaching that uses sensor data to deliver safety and productivity feedback in real time.
The university said manufacturing workers across Ohio will eventually use SIGHT for safety training, with expansion to companies outside of Ohio planned by 2028.
Staff Writer Mandy Gambrell contributed to this report.
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