Abstract
Serious gaming claims to provide an interactive and motivational approach to learning; hence, it is being increasingly used in various disciplines, including dentistry. GRAPHIC (Games Research Applied to Public Health with Innovative Collaboration)-II, a serious game for dental public health, was used by dental undergraduates at King’s College London, in the 2013–2014 academic year. The aim was to explore the use of GRAPHIC and student perspectives on the game. Students were divided into two groups with 79 students in each group, based on timetabling schedules to use the game as part of their learning. The average number of submission attempts by students in group 1 and group 2 used to complete the game was 18.3 (SD = 14.45) and 8.9 (SD = 16.80), respectively (p < 0.001). Logged data also showed that more students in group 2 completed the game with only one attempt (n = 23), compared with group 1 (n = 4). Amongst these students there were four different patterns of satisfactory answers which constituted their chance to ‘win’ and a range of times. Across the two groups, a number of students completed the game with a high number (>30) of attempts (n = 18). These findings suggest that whilst some students may have completed the game using a collaborative approach, others may have used a random approach to complete the game. These two strategies are considered to hinder students from achieving learning outcomes within the game, and may be related to the limitations of the game in managing the role of failure. Feedback from students towards the game was positive overall with further development suggested. In summary, GRAPHIC contributed to dental public health education, and the logging system of gaming activities can be considered as a helpful feature of serious games, to permit academic staff to identify and assist students in achieving learning outcomes, and inform future game refinement.
Highlights
Serious gaming is gaining momentum in an educational context as an interactive and motivational approach to learning (Jabbar and Felicia 2015; Ke et al 2016; Boyle et al 2016)
GRAPHIC (Games Research Applied to Public Health with Innovative Collaboration)-II, a serious game for dental public health, was used by dental undergraduates at King’s College London, in the 2013–2014 academic year
GRAPHIC-II was made available as an in-course requirement for one academic year (2013–14) of dental undergraduate students’ dental public health course at King’s College London Dental Institute
Summary
Serious gaming is gaining momentum in an educational context as an interactive and motivational approach to learning (Jabbar and Felicia 2015; Ke et al 2016; Boyle et al 2016). Because of these advantages, and in comparison to traditional educational delivery methods, serious games are being increasingly used for training in governmental, military, health, and educational arenas (Zyda 2005; Boyle et al 2016). There are serious games for pre-clinical subjects such as dentine bonding (Amer et al 2011) and alginate mixing (Hannig et al 2013), and positive impact on learners were found in these dental serious games
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