Abstract:

Background:
An integrated curriculum enables learning that integrates knowledge and skills, connects concepts and areas of achievement, and brings students closer to the professional world across disciplines and subjects. However, there is little literature on integrated curricula in higher education, especially Health sciences. Existing research highlights that its implementation causes several problems, such as inconsistent educational backgrounds, lack of teaching materials, and inadequate curriculum. Moreover, contemporary pedagogical trends encourage the use of digital interactive materials, which are active, innovative tools and highly popular with students.

Objective:
The primary objective of this quasi-experimental longitudinal study was to assess the effectiveness of digital interactive learning materials in facilitating mastery of the integrated curriculum in the first-year dental students at the Universidad Europea de Valencia (UEV).

Methods:
The Genially tool was used to create an educational interactive learning game that integrated the contents about “Cell Junctions” studied in Biology, Physiology, and Histology. It included the classification of cell junctions, differences among anchoring junctions, molecules of adhesion, interaction with leukocyte-endothelium, and the most relevant dental diseases, related to the student’s future professional career. The subjects were ca. 240 first-year undergraduate dental students enrolled in “Cellular Biology and Human genetics” and “Anatomy and Physiology of the Human body”. They were divided into the control group following a master class and the experimental group that played the interactive material after the master class.
The student knowledge was evaluated through a 4-question test which was performed with Blackboard Ultra at two different time points:
i) a pre-test at the beginning of the course to assess students’ previous knowledge;
ii) a post-test at the end of the activity to evaluate the knowledge improvement.

To evaluate students’ opinions about the experience, a perception survey was completed, using Microsoft Forms.

Results:
An improvement was observed in each of the 4 questions of the post-test compared to the pre-test in the experimental group, but not in the control group. 12% of students in the experimental group answered correctly all 4 post-test questions compared to 1% of students in the control group.
Regarding the perception survey, 88% of the students found Genially to be an effective tool to learn about Cell Junctions, encouraging them to think about this topic in a new way; 93% stated that it was effective to repeat topics taught in “Cell Biology” and “Anatomy and Physiology”, 79% considered that it was useful to integrate knowledge among different subjects and relate Basic Science concepts to their future professional life as a dentist. Most of the students found the activity entertaining (90%), rewarding (74%), fun (63%), interesting (92%), and a better way to learn compared to a master class (78%). Moreover, 89% of the students would like to repeat a similar experience in another subject and 93% would recommend this activity to other students.

Conclusion:
Genially can be used as an effective tool to consolidate knowledge from different subjects and enhance students' understanding of fundamental scientific concepts.

Keywords:

Integrated curriculum, integrated learning, Biology, Physiology, Histology, Biomedical Sciences.