Serious Games and Gamification: Health Care Workers' Experience, Attitudes, and Knowledge.

OBJECTIVE: With the rapid advancement of digital technology due to COVID-19, the health care field is embracing the use of digital technologies for learning, which presents an opportunity for teaching methods such as serious games to be developed and improved. Technology offers more options for these educational approaches. The goal of this study was to assess health care workers' experiences, attitudes, and knowledge regarding serious games in training. METHODS: The convenience sample consisted of 223 participants from the specialties of internal medicine and psychiatry who responded to questions regarding sociodemographic data, experience, attitudes, and knowledge regarding serious games. This study used an ordinal regression model to analyze the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, and experiences and the idea or wish to implement serious games. RESULTS: The majority of healthcare workers were not familiar with serious games or gamification. The results show gender and age differences regarding familiarity and willingness to use serious games. With increasing age, the respondents preferred conventional and traditional learning methods to playful teaching elements; younger generations were significantly more motivated than older generations when envisioning using elements of serious games in the future. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged the use of new technologies and digitalization. This study describes positive attitudes toward serious games, mainly in younger people working in health care. Serious games present an opportunity to develop new approaches for postgraduate medical teachings and continuing medical education.

Evaluation of a digital game for teaching behavioral aspects of clinical communication in dentistry.

INTRODUCTION: Traditionally, dental students learn the skills for dentist-patient interaction and communication via on-site contact with patients, when they start clinical training. However, preclinical students (who have not started clinical practice) have fewer chances to realize the context of dentist-patient interaction. It has remained unclear if a gamification approach via digital media, i.e., a computer role-playing game, can help to learn clinical communication skills. The intervention-based study investigates the effectiveness of the clinical dentist-patient communication (CDPC) game on students' motivation, beliefs, and self-efficacy to learn behavioral issues of clinical communication. METHODS: Fifty-two dental students (Preclinical group) and 18 dental interns and dentists (Clinical group) played the CDPC game, which consists of 16 scenes of clinical context about dentist-patient communication (less than 40 min for playing), via web browsers. Pre-test and post-test questionnaires were used to assess their motivation, beliefs, and self-efficacy to learn behavioral issues of clinical communication. The effectiveness was examined by comparing pre-test and post-test scores within-subject and between-group difference was compared between Preclinical and Clinical groups, via non-parametric statistical tests. RESULTS: (A) In the Preclinical group, participants showed a significant increase in motivation and self-efficacy in learning after playing the CDPC game (p < 0.05, adjusted of multiple comparison). (B) In contrast, the Clinical group did not show a significant difference before vs. after playing the game. (C) After playing the game, the Preclinical group showed a significant association between motivation and beliefs (p = 0.024) and between motivation and self-efficacy (p = 0.001); the Clinical group showed a significant association between motivation and beliefs (p = 0.033). CONCLUSIONS: The current evidence suggests that gamification of learning helps preclinical students to understand the context of clinical dentist-patient interaction and increase their motivation and self-efficacy to learn behavioral issues of clinical communication.

The effects of neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality: A quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice in neonatal intensive care units for nursing college students has been restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak; thus, the gamification program has emerged as an alternative learning method. Consequently, there is a need to examine the effectiveness of such alternative learning methods to enhance the response to high-risk newborn emergencies. OBJECTIVES: To examine the effects (neonatal resuscitation nursing knowledge, problem-solving and clinical reasoning ability, self-confidence in practical performance, degree of anxiety, and learning motivation) of a neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality based on Keller's ARCS model. DESIGN: A non-randomized controlled simulation study with a pretest-posttest design. SETTING: Lab and lecture rooms of two universities in South Korea, from June to November 2021. PARTICIPANTS: Prelicensure nursing students. METHODS: The virtual reality group (n = 29) underwent a neonatal resuscitation gamification program using virtual reality based on Keller's ARCS model. The simulation group (n = 28) received high-fidelity neonatal resuscitation simulations and online neonatal resuscitation program lectures. The control group (n = 26) only received online neonatal resuscitation program lectures. Changes in scores among these groups were compared using analysis of variance and analysis of covariance with SPSS for Windows version 27.0. RESULTS: Post intervention, neonatal resuscitation knowledge [F(2) = 3.83, p = .004] and learning motivation [F(2) = 1.79, p = .025] were significantly higher in the virtual reality and simulation groups than in the control group, whereas problem-solving ability [F(2) = 2.07, p = .038] and self-confidence [F(2) = 6.53, p < .001] were significantly higher in the virtual reality group than in the simulation and control groups. Anxiety [F(2) = 16.14, p < .001] was significantly lower in the simulation group than in the virtual reality and control groups. CONCLUSIONS: The neonatal resuscitation gamification program using immersive virtual reality was found to be effective in increasing neonatal resuscitation knowledge, problem-solving ability, self-confidence, and learning motivation of the nursing students who participated in the trial application process.

Gamification as a Promoting Tool of Motivation for Creating Sustainable Higher Education Institutions.

Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) are responsible for creating healthy and sustainable environments for students and teachers through diverse educational paradigms such as gamification. In this sense, the Healthy People 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals indicated the imperative to provide inclusive and equitable quality education to promote a healthy environment and life. The principal objective was to analyse the impact of gamification on health development in HEIs, highlighting their positive and negative effects. To achieve such an objective, a bibliometric analysis was carried out. The 257 documents showed no significant increasing trend in the last decade (p > 0.05) related to the pandemic. Most of the publications were conferences (45%), and the few published articles were the documents with more citations (p < 0.001). According to their index in Journal Citation Reports, there were significant differences between the citations of articles published in journals (p < 0.001). The analysis of journal co-citations showed that the leading journals (such as Computers in Human Behavior) had a significant part in the clusters formed (p < 0.001), conditioning also the keywords, especially the term "motivation". These findings were discussed, concluding that the experimental studies focused on the teachers' adverse effects are yet to come.