Session Title: Educational Gaming for Serious Learning in an Undergraduate Medical Program
Time & Date: 12:40 P.M. – 1:55 P.M., Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Location: Student Union Building (SUB) Partyroom
Session Description: Brainspan is a unique, innovative learning resource developed at the University of Alberta. Instructors can create their own course specific learning games, add feedback in the form of text, images or links to websites where the student can find good peer reviewed information to enrich their educational experience. The majority of the courses in the preclinical medical education program are utilizing this resource for course-specific games. We were interested to learn what students thought about the learning games and if the feedback resources in the games were used. A survey was distributed to the first year students and the response rate was 51%. 24.5% played games throughout the course, 10% played from the midterm and onwards, and 61% played before exams. 4.1% of respondents never played. 94% said the games were useful for learning; 98% thought that the games enhanced learning; 70% of students said that they thought they experienced less course related stress because of the games, 24.5% were neutral; 78% reported they would use the games for review in subsequent years; 86% used the feedback provided. There were over 13,000 hits on the feedback button in a class of 198 during the 7 week course. Students used the games for serious review during the course and when asked in the final question of the survey for one suggestion to improve the games, the two most common suggestions were to ensure that all questions had extensive feedback and to increase the number of questions available.
Conference Stream: Learning & Teaching
Session Format: Poster Presentation
Co-Presenter: Judy Gnarpe
Co-Presenter Bio: Dr. Judy Gnarpe is a microbiology faculty lecturer who believes her role is to ensure student success. She has implemented a game approach for medical and nursing student education which has been enthusiastically accepted by students.
Co-Presenter: Bonita Bray
Co-Presenter: Bob Boufford
