Practical Solutions for designing gamification during COVID-19: Medical faculty member experience

Dear Editor,

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has enforced institutions to move forward with new teaching strategies in a hasty way. One of the new teaching strategies is gamification, where by creating an environment full of joy and vitality, learners participate in the learning process.[1]

Encouraging students’ engagement during education and helping the application of what has been learnt in the real life can be considered benefits of gamification in medical education.[2,3]

During this pandemic, some faculty members of the medical sciences used the gamification strategy to make their teaching more attractive. In this regard, we interviewed six medical faculty members who had used the gamification strategy in three semesters of the COVID-19 era. Three of them taught subjects such as anatomy and physiology using Quizlet flashcards, and the rest used the Kahoot platform for student assessment. Some of their experiences are mentioned.

One of the faculties mentioned, “When we use the game in teaching, the student participates in a competitive activity with pre-determined rules and this makes the student play motivated in the game. Students could participate in the game several times. Sometimes, they even told me to re-enable our link to play again and review the content again.”

Also, faculties have provided solutions for designing gamification in medical education during the COVID-19 era. These practical solutions include the following:

• Divide the lessons into smaller ones to teach how to play the game. This helps to design short tests to track learners’ progress.

• Gamification is defined as a narrative story and appropriate to students’ future careers and helps individual learning to take place. For example, in the face of a simulated patient, the learner chooses the treatment himself/herself by using the list of options, and this is how individual learning occurs.

• When designing gamification elements for the classroom, consider how learners work together, their abilities, and their preferences (learning style).

• Keep in mind that the more frequent and immediate the feedback on this type of learning strategy, the greater the effectiveness of learning and learner participation.

• Test design in this type of educational strategy causes repetition of lesson topics for learners. By doing this design, learners will be able to view similar topics from a different aspect, for instance, designing several tests about drug side effects and contraindications. It allows students to find a multi-faceted perspective of the subject and to build their knowledge with the help of this strategy.

• By designing a low-risk friendly test, we can create a healthy amount of stress; this recommendation helps the learner to be more prepared for high-risk tests.

• You can use different game platforms to interact more in classes such as space race, Quizlet, and Kahoot. Kahoot is the first platform designed to provide a gaming experience using the principles of intrinsic motivation theory. It has advantages over other games: 1. In addition to engaging in a gaming experience, the learner can compete with other learners. 2. It makes it possible to participate in a social game through metaphor.

Author contributions’ statement

Mk and NK contributed to the study, coordination, participated in the acquisition of data and drafted the manuscript. MK and MA participated in the acquisition of data and analysis and drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Consent to participate

Informed written consent to participate was obtained from all respondents participate in the study voluntarily, and the name of them was not mentioned in the scripts.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.