Reflections on Mod 7

Ultimately, from this module I learned that games and simulations can be useful
in medical education in a couple of ways. Firstly, studies evaluating using games as an
educational intervention in comparison to traditional lecture-style teaching have shown
that games are equally as effective in teaching content, but learners tend to find them
more stimulating with improved interaction with the instructors and better retention of
information. As a caveat, the evaluation methods in these studies have primarily been
satisfaction and pre/post-test methods, which are not strongest assessments of
effectiveness. I think these concepts can easily be added to lectures using powerpoint to
increase the interactiveness of the lecture and get learners more invested in the content.
I think well-designed games, tutorials and simulations can be particularly
advantageous in the medical education setting to help prompt learners to think critically
and apply knowledge to clinical settings. These need to be well-designed, with clear
learning objectives, assessment strategies and concepts from the design and cognitive
load theories that we have learned about this semester. I saw such tutorials on SoftChalk
(eye anatomy), Open Learning Initiave at Carngie Mellon (anatomy and physiology), and
MERLOT (anatomy of the human brain) that I think are good representations for the kind
of tutorial I would like to create for our residents. I enjoyed the combination of text
content with supplemental images/animations and self-assessments throughout, with
immediate feedback and re-enforcement of key concepts and learning points. I think
creation of these will take a lot of work, and I would hope to start with a pilot few and
assess how often the residents use them and how effective they think they are prior to
committing to a full curriculum of online tutorials. However, I think that some of the
concepts from creation of the games can be applied to my lecture style as well walking
through a topic step-by-step and giving mini-quizzes or asking residents to choose a
diagnosis or treatment during the lecture to make it interactive and stimulate them to
think and apply the information to a clinical scenario even within the lecture. I think
these are important strategies to get residents invested in the learning process and think
about how to use what the information you are providing them. Potentially, I can start
modifying some of my lectures in this way as a starting block for building interactive
tutorials.