Abstract
Digital games are a common form of entertainment in modern society and are increasingly prevalent in health education. However, little research has been conducted into their use for delivering anatomy and histology education for health students. This is surprising considering the difficulty many health students have learning anatomy and histology. The study used a mixed methodology, consisting of a controlled trial and qualitative evaluation of learner attitudes towards the digital game. The trial stratified learners into two groups: a digital game group and a multiple-choice quiz group, for one semester. At the end of semester final examination results from the two groups were compared to see if the digital game was a comparable means of revising anatomy and histology subject matter. Additionally, an online survey and semi-structured interviews were used to explore student attitudes towards the digital game. Findings demonstrated that a digital game could be as effective as alternative methods to support revision of anatomy subject matter. Further, results post-intervention survey (n=10) and semi-structured interviews (n=6) showed that students were interested in the use of digital games to support revision and enjoyed their experiences using the digital game during their studies.
Highlights
Digital games have great potential as innovative learning tools due to their demonstrated ability to motivate, challenge and engage learners (Prensky, 2003)
The research presented in this article contributes new findings on health students’ familiarity with and usage of commercial video games. These findings show that there is a low level of commercial digital game usage amongst Australian allied health students
Findings from this study demonstrated that a digital game can be an effective means of engaging learners in continuous anatomy revision for the duration of a unit of study
Summary
Digital games have great potential as innovative learning tools due to their demonstrated ability to motivate, challenge and engage learners (Prensky, 2003). The pedagogical literature demonstrates that anatomy has been taught much the same way since the early 20th century with educators resistant to changes in teaching practice (Sugand, Abrahams, & Khurana, 2010) This is not surprising since functional content-heavy anatomy units of study require students to learn a new medical Latin-based language, while integrating new content and concepts into real-life functional applications. For these reasons, there is a need to explore the use of new and innovative tools to facilitate the learning and teaching of anatomy
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