Abstract:

“Nutrition and Dietetics” is an optional subject offered in the third course of the degree in Medicine at the University of Valencia. Despite being a very demanded subject (over 80 students per year), attendance to lessons remained in low numbers until the incorporation of new teaching methodologies to replace the magistral class (debate, infographics, etc.), which began to be developed in 2018. However, the improvements obtained were challenged by the asynchronous on-line modality in which the subject was offered in the 2020/2021 course, due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Gamification tools are having very good results in the teaching field. Specifically, escape rooms have begun to be used in recent years in university careers in public health, proving their usefulness, not only to review the contents of the subjects, but also to highlight the importance of teamwork and communication.

With the main purpose of maintaining the student’s participation and adherence in the subject, we created the digital educational escape room entitled "Alimental, querido Watson" (a Spanish pun for the expression “Elementary, my dear Watson”). Students played the role of detective Sherlock Holmes in order to solve a strange case of death by intoxication, during which their knowledge on human physiology, nutrition and dietetics was tested. Furthermore, we also wanted to improve the students learning by solving different enigmas, always related to the contents of the subject. The results from this pilot activity show that, as expected, students exhibited a greater involvement and satisfaction with the exercise, as well as a higher academic performance. Therefore, our experience confirms that using this gamification-based teaching tool is very useful in the degree in medicine.

Keywords:

Escape room, gamification, nutrition, health sciences, active learning, ICT.