Abstract:

Parasitology is an amazing discipline, but for the students it is hard to learn due to the amount of concepts, scientific names, different stages and the complex taxonomy of the parasites.

The challenge of learning Parasitology could be compared to the difficulties that a spectator/reader would have in following the script of a film/novel with plenty of characters and in a foreign language. In a homologue way, for the student it is complicated to understand the subject until he/she incorporates to his/her language all the concepts (i.e. paratenic host, intermediate host, heteroxenous life cycles) and the different parasite stages in their life cycle (i.e. trophozoite, cyst, larvae, adult, bradizoite, amastigote). In addition, these stages can be found in a large variety of animal species, organs and environmental locations. Finally, the taxonomy might be tedious, although once incorporated to the learning process becomes very useful for the students, since many characteristics or concepts can be grouped together for several closely related parasitic organisms (i.e. in Apicomplexa: stages of life cycle, morphology of the zoites, resistance forms, and other characteristics). However, we cannot forget that the names of the genera, mostly coming from Latin and Greek languages, are not easy to remember (i.e. Macracanthorrhynchus, Linguatula, Calicophoron, Fasciola, Giardia).

We propose a gamification approach to learn Parasitology. While the students participate in the game, names, concepts and images are integrating in their knowledge together, easing the learning process. Since the game awards the student with points associated in each of the clues, the student can also make an auto-evaluation and become aware of his/her learning progress.

In the game, there will be two approaches, one of them incorporating clues, one by one, and the other incorporating images. The objective of the game is to guess the name of the genus. The least number of clues used to guess the genus, the most points the student gets. Each failure has a penalization in order to force the student to think, avoiding random answers. When the students write correctly the name of the genus, a new webpage with basic information of the parasite (host, location, stages, resistant and transmission forms, type of life cycle, morphology) will appear as a reinforcement of the learning process.

We intend to apply this approach to our students of Parasitology of human medicine and veterinary sciences, and evaluate the learning process with a test to the students before and after the use of the game.

Keywords:

Parasitology, human medicine, veterinary medicine, gamification.