Abstract:

Educational innovations have focused on the need for immediate learning feedback and student involvement. Gamification is defined as the incorporation of game mechanics, such as levels or quests into non-game activities, to promote learning episodes that would give learners low risk ways to assess their own capabilities and to create an environment in which effort is rewarded. During the game session, a failure can be (partially) rectify and becomes an opportunity to learn thus, the negative anxiety of the students to fail is reduced. We have designed a pilot workshop as a training activity for a large classroom in the module on Digestive Pathophysiology (DP) within Molecular Pathophysiology subject, coursed during the third year of the Pharmaceutical Degree at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. This workshop aims to put into practice the concepts seen during the theoretical sessions, favoring logic and reason over memorization.

The training workshop included two parts, one focused on fast and individual reasoning and the second part aimed to elaborate teamwork/group reasoning.

Part One: We have included 10/15 multiple-choice response questions with discussion about digestive pathophysiology, assessed by individual remote response system (clickers).
Part two: We have incorporated gamification elements, (such as detective role and to resolve a mystery, it’s the unknown pathology) adapted from the popular board game “Guess who?”, to find a specific digestive pathology. In our case, three pathologies must be respectively discovered by three student groups, playing the detective role (called as “Sherlock” groups, SG). To find the hidden pathology, SG have to gather clues.

The rest of the students were organized in three “Patient” groups (PG). Every PG received a distinctive colored envelope in which they found specific information about each pathology:
1) Initial clue (symptoms, clinical features, etc.),
2) Pathology name,
3) Key question.

To discover the pathology, SG must ask to PG questions about the results of laboratory tests, physical examinations or features that would help SG to suspect pathology, while discarding others. To make a correct diagnosis a key question must be done by SG to differentiate/distinguish pathologies that have common symptoms.

The dynamics of the workshop are as follows:
1) Each SG chooses a PG. Then, the envelope is opened and the first clue is read out load.
2) The PG chosen is given 10-15 minutes to analyze the problem, thinking on possible indicators that can provide a diagnosis and reasoning to elaborate proper answers to probable questions asked by SG.
3) The SG is given 10-15 minutes to elaborate four questions that would allow the "diagnosis" and to rule out other alternatives.

When SG is able to figure out the pathology using 4 questions (or less), they are rewarded with 8 points. If the Key Question is one of those, SG get 2 extra points and the maximum score. One point is deducted for every additional question needed. The score obtained by the students of the SGs was used in their final evaluation of the subject.

Keywords:

Higher education, gamification, workshop.