Abstract:

The university has the role of being a transforming agent of the economic, social and cultural environments, based on the teaching, research and extension triad, and must present itself coherently in order to combine efforts to strengthen society as a whole. According to this vision, extension activities become an opportune means of social intervention and should also be present in the curriculum of the courses' obligatory subjects and not just in parallel projects. From this, a group of professors of the graduation course in nursing decided to adopt as an evaluative activity of their curricular disciplines and based on the methodologies of “serious games” and “project-based learning”, the construction of games with the intention of teaching the lay population on specific topics. The aim of this study is to report this experience. The study took place at Universidade São Judas, a private university located in the city of São Paulo – Brazil. The study population consisted of 38 students enrolled in the subject “Integral Attention to Mental Health” and 55 students enrolled in the subject “Integral Attention to Urgencies and Emergencies”. In each discipline, the students were randomly divided, through a draw, into groups of seven to ten people. The random choice was chosen to discard the affinity factor as a choice, since one of the intentions of the activity was that they could work on skills such as teamwork, communication and conflict management during its execution. The students had three months to build the game, in which three feedbacks were given during this period, by the teachers responsible for directing and eventual corrections. Themes, type of game and dynamics were created by each group and validated by the teachers. At the end of the project, a two-day event was held at the university so that employees and students from other courses could test the games and each group could write a final report. In total, 12 games related to urgency and emergency were made, Stroke, acute myocardial infarction, exogenous intoxication, trauma, burns, first aid for adults and children and Basic Life Support; seven Mental Health games addressing topics such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Schizophrenia, Autism, Postpartum Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. The types of games used were: board, memory, simulation, escape game and game show. In the two days of the event, approximately 250 people honored the students and were able to acquire and improve their knowledge on the topics addressed, achieving one of the objectives as an extensionist activity. In this way, we were able to conclude that the result of this project in including an extensionist activity in the mandatory curriculum with the intention of sensitizing the student to look at the needs of the population in relation to health education and to use the strategies of serious game and project-based learning it was satisfactory. Students showed interest and commitment during all stages of the project, in addition to having developed important skills for professional nurses in the current job market.

Keywords:

Extension, project-based learning, serious game.