Maxime ROS ^1* Lorenz S. Neuwirth, Ph.D. ^2* Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland ³

• ¹ Education Science School, LIRDEF, Montpellier University, Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
• ² State University of New York at Old Westbury, Old Westbury, United States
• ³ Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dragvoll, Norway, Dragvoll, Norway

The modern advancement and interdisciplinary use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) immersive technologies has rapidly evolved and in parallel has also advanced the way medical education is being taught in the 21 st century. However, the development of careful, evidence-based reports evaluating which VR and AR technologies, pedagogical methods, and instructional designs are most effective has not kept pace with the rapid increase in reports on educational use of immersive technologies. As a result, there are currently several gaps within the field regarding which immersive technologies and teaching methods have been proven to be effective for instructional learning. The questions that arise from these gaps in the literature seek to address the following: what are the best contexts for integrating immersive technologies into the pedagogical curriculum; what instructional designs work best and why; and how does such VR and AR pedagogy influence the learner's cognitive load when compared to the traditional lecture. These questions are important for the field to address as it moves forward, in order to provide evidence-based teaching and research. Such corroborating evidence will guide the future development of immersive technology pedagogy in medical science education.As technology and the curriculum for medical science education continues to evolve, it is important to continue to gather papers that serve to "Redefine The Pedagogy in Virtual And Augmented Reality in Medical Science Education" to track both the history, the advancements, and to evaluate what has been deemed both effective and ineffective pedagogical developments. These VR and AR advancements have been increasingly sought after since the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) as a means to keep learning immersive, relevant, and timely. Additionally, the need to create such immersive learning with firstperson point-of-view (FP-POV) technology has become increasingly sought after. The first two papers in this special issue highlight some of these advancements. A thorough evaluation comparing VR standardizing these pedagogical efforts, we can learn how to tailor the pedagogy for student learners 95 at the undergraduate, high school, and K-12 levels to be more able to utilize AR and VR for future 96 careers in the medical fields. This approach will not only introduce VR and AR earlier in the curriculum 97 but also scaffold their procedural learning skill sets throughout their educational years. This will help 98 students at all learning levels to integrate these procedural skill sets in accordance with Bloom's 99 taxonomy of learning (i.e., remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating 100 content). What can be foreseen is an emergent immersive curriculum that can produce richer applied 101 learning experiences with more memorable content through procedural skill sets that enhance and 102 supplement the students' content knowledge; all of which serves to educate students by increasing their 103 competencies and proficiencies, and reducing errors when working in a wide range of medical sciences.