The WOW Project (WOW): Wonders Of The World Through Virtual Reality for Hospitalized Children (WOW)

Immersive Bedside Teaching for Hospitalized Pediatric Patient - A Prospective, Mixed-method, Cohort Study

Hospitalized pediatric patients are unable to leave the hospital to engage in traditional learning environments. Patients often feel depressed, disconnected from learning, and socially withdrawn. The Stanford Chariot Program proposes a partnership with the Palo Alto Unified Hospital School at Stanford Children's Health to reignite patients' emotional well-being through learning. The WOW Project aims to use virtual reality (VR) to travel with hospitalized children to the Wonders of the World (WOW). Combining this immersive learning modality with complementary hands-on activities at the bedside, the investigators will transport them from their hospital room into a nurturing virtual environment to stimulate their emotional, mental, and social growth while they are physically healing. The investigators will evaluate their overall joy and awe of learning by using standardized emotional scales.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Virtual Reality
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Virtual Reality

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 100
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Astrid Suen, MMedSc; Phone Number: 6504970927; Email: smy822@stanford.edu
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Thomas Caruso, MD, PhD; Phone Number: 6504970927; Email: tjcaruso@stanford.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • Palo Alto, California, United States, 94304
      • Recruiting
      • Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford
      • Contact: Thomas J Caruso, MD, MEd; Phone Number: 650-723-5728; Email: tjcaruso@stanford.edu

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Between the age of 5 and 17.
• English speaking.
• Anticipated in-patient stay for more than 1 day.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Legal guardian not present to obtain consent
• Child with a significant neurological condition, or major developmental disability
• Child with active infection of the face or hand
• A history of severe motion sickness
• A history of seizures caused by flashing light
• Major surgery within the last 12 hours

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm

Intervention / Treatment

Experimental: Virtual Reality Group; Participants will all receive the VR intervention and will be instructed to wear an Oculus Quest 3 headset (Meta, Inc., Menlo Park, CA) and participate in virtual field trips from Engage (David Whelan). Brink Traveler (Akin Bilgic) and Wander (John Entwistle) that are specifically designed to reignite the joy and awe of learning.

Behavioral: Virtual Reality; After obtaining written consent, participants will be asked to complete a brief demographic survey and pre-intervention surveys (content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). They will then be equipped with a VR headset, Quest 3 (Meta, Inc., Menlo Park, CA) displaying the educational field trip. After the VR field trip, participants will participate in a complementary hands-on science experiment. At the conclusion of the experiment, patients will be asked to complete the post intervention surveys (i.e awe, content knowledge, and wellbeing surveys). Additionally, for the first 20 participants, 15 participants will be randomly selected and asked to participate in a 5 open-ended question qualitative interview regarding engagement of the lesson. Audio will be recorded via zoom.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Assess the impact of VR-based field trips on the feeling of awe of the pediatric inpatient population	The primary outcome will be AWE measured by the AWE-SF Survey - The Awe Experience Short Form Scale. The survey contains 12 items about awe experience. Each item was rated on a 7-point scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree).	immediately after intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in the number of correct answers of the content knowledge	Change in number of correct answers of the content knowledge using Bloom's Taxonomy questioning. Participants will respond to 5 questions, two questions about comprehension, one question about application, one question about analysis and one question about evaluation. Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the higher number of correct answer.	Day 1 baseline, Day 1 immediately after intervention
Change in a patients' well-being as measured through the World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5)	The WHO (Five) Well-Being Index is a participant-reported outcome measure that assesses current mental well being. Questionnaire contains 5 questions . Scores range from 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating the corresponding feeling exists all the time.	Day 1 baseline, Day 1 immediately after intervention
Thematic analysis of the qualitative surveys including how the lesson engagement correlates to the increase in joyful learning.	Analysis of data collected via qualitative surveys, using saturation sampling and documented coding techniques, will result in thematic descriptions how the lesson engagement correlates to the increase in joyful learning.	immediately after intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Stanford University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 10, 2025
• Primary Completion (Estimated): August 31, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): August 31, 2026

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 28, 2025
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 28, 2025
• First Posted (Actual): April 4, 2025

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimated): October 20, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 16, 2025
• Last Verified: October 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Immersive Learning
• Other Study ID Numbers: 80079

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No