Abstract:

Games are increasingly used as supplemental teaching tools in Higher Education. Crossword and quiz games are quite common in educational game play because they are easy to invent and are capable to simulate test situations.
Based on the positive results obtained from a previous experience with a small students group, this work purpose a gaming approach to teaching and learning Pharmacology, a weighed down subject with difficult concepts and numerous new terms and proper drug names. This experience is included in a bigger project where games, concept maps, discussion forum and extra-academic experiences are or will be offered to veterinary students in the Complutense University of Madrid.
The initial set is a crossword collection created by teachers that covers ten theme categories about veterinary pharmacology, corresponding with the main syllabus sections. An eleventh category, namely veterinary formulary, focuses on the most usually prescribed drug names.
At the beginning, five crosswords are included in each category. During the experience, students can freely access to this repository and then, a randomized and personal crossword selection (11, one from each category) is offered them to solve. Students must correspond sending a new crossword developed by themselves focused on a random and individually allocated category. Teachers supervise the new games created by students, valuate and correct the crosswords (both answers and design) and assimilate them to the crossword collection. So, the repository is continuously expanding and it is richer and broader every day.
We think that crossword solving in a subject such as Pharmacology offers a possible strategy to enhance retention of knowledge. In the other hand, the crosswords creation could be used to develop the students’ skills in expressing and putting in words the pharmacological concepts that they learn. So, this experience can improve the acquisition of both concept and rote knowledge.

Keywords:

Crossword, Pharmacology, repository, concept learning, rote learning.