Evaluation of the Road to Birth Software to Support Obstetric Problem-Based Learning Education with a Cohort of Pre-Clinical Medical Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for sharing your research with the community. Although the sample is small, the results are promising. As you said, a starting point for future research will be "When optimally integrated into medical education, these resources may ultimately lead to more effective and safer pregnancy care." I will and that is a good starting point for teaching and learning increasing. 

Author Response

Thank you for sharing your research with the community. Although the sample is small, the results are promising. As you said, a starting point for future research will be "When optimally integrated into medical education, these resources may ultimately lead to more effective and safer pregnancy care." I will and that is a good starting point for teaching and learning increasing. 

Author response: Thank you for these comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper mainly describes a quantitative and qualitative user study conducted to assess a software to teach medical students. The software can be run on a mobile smartphone/tablet or on an HMD for virtual reality. 

The paper focuses on the analysis of the user study, but I would have preferred to understand more about the application and technology behind, since it is important to understand the implications of the study. 

The experimental settings in which the user performed the software based learning is not clear.

The study is not clear on its purposes. Is it comparing VR with mobile devices? or is it comparing a new emerging learning paradigm with previous one? the conclusion does not specify what the purpose is. 

It is also not clear whether students were pro or against such software. the speed of taking the quiz was also not incorporated in the conclusion. 

I agree with the limitation mentioned by the authors. But I think these limitation must be tackled in the current submission. Especially having four people for the focus group (all the qualitative data and themes were based on the focus group). 

Finally, I think there should be more related work cited. 

Author Response

Please see attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review such an article. Nowadays it is very common to use virtual or augmented reality in education. Thus, I consider the topic of the article to be topical. However, I think that the article needs to be completed before further consideration.

Comments and suggestions:

1. It is not clear to me what platforms the application was developed for. Please write this in a more structured way.

2. How did the virtual and augmented reality versions differ?

3. Augmented reality has only been tested on smartphones and tablets? Or was a HoloLens headset (or similar one) also used?

Author Response

Please see attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the author for their responses. But I believe the comments need to be addressed more rigorously. Therefore, I am keeping the comments open and my previous recommendation. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article can be accepted now.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf