Cardiac Cycle Puzzle: Development and Analysis of Students’ Perception of an Online Digital Version for Teaching Cardiac Physiology

Lais Tono Cardozo,Lucila Ludmila Paula Gutierrez,Victor Travassos Sarinho,Érica Maria Granjeiro,Luís Henrique Montrezor,Fernanda Klein Marcondes

doi:10.5753/jis.2021.1879

Abstract

Cardiac physiology is a basic subject in the curriculum of health Science undergraduate courses, which allow students to understand the functional mechanisms of cardiovascular organs as well as the physiopathology of cardiovascular diseases. The puzzle of cardiac cycle has been developed to help students to understand and integrate the concepts of morphology and physiology of normal and pathological states of the heart. Considering the good acceptance of the printed puzzle by students and professors, its online version has been developed as a digital educational tool. The aims of this work were to describe the development of the online digital version of this educational game and to evaluate the students’ perception of the utility of the digital game for their learning. The digital version was developed using the figures and answers of the original printed cardiac cycle puzzle, including stages 1 and 2, in three languages: Portuguese, English and Spanish. The digital version was tested by professors of Physiology from different university institutions for validation. The final version of game was used in remote teaching in three courses in the health area, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The opinion of students about the usefulness of the game activity for their learning was analyzed by using a survey. In the opinion of participants in this study, the activity with the online digital version of the cardiac cycle puzzle was useful for their learning.

Highlights

Cardiovascular physiology is an important and complex issue in the health courses curriculum
In the opinion of the students of the three courses participating in this study, the activity with the online digital version of the cardiac cycle puzzle was useful for learning (Table 1), and the reasons for this evaluation were similar among the courses
This article describes the development of a digital version of the cardiac cycle puzzle, together with the students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of its use in higher education

Summary

Introduction

Cardiovascular physiology is an important and complex issue in the health courses curriculum. Professionals of health career must know the morpho-functional characteristics of the cardiovascular system, in order to understand the physiopathological changes of the heart and blood vessels, as well as integrate basic knowledge and clinical application. The professional will be able to guide, to diagnose and to treat cardiovascular diseases (Abreu et al 2014; Azer, 2014; Malta et al 2014). First and second-year students of healthcare careers struggle to integrate cardiac morphological and physiological concepts. It becomes more challenging when the teaching-learning process is fractioned into subjects and based on the transmission and memorization of content in a professorcentered model (Borges et al 2016). For meaningful learning to occur, it is necessary to be student-centered process, using active teaching strategies like educational games (Tarouco et al 2004; Berbel, 2011)

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