A Multimedia Audience Response Game Show for Medical Education

Games are increasingly popular in medical education. However, there is a need for games that target today’s learners, including their preferences for active participation, social interaction, immediate feedback, and multimedia formats. With these preferences in mind, a commercially available game show template was used to develop a game show for review of medical microbiology. The game show was combined with an audience response system (“clickers”) to enable participation of all students in a large group setting. A 19-item questionnaire was used to measure students’ perceptions of the game. The questionnaire was administered after participants had played the games on three separate occasions during their first year of medical school. The response of medical students to the game shows was overwhelmingly positive. Students valued the ability of the game shows to engage them, to provide a positive learning environment, to clarify concepts, and to develop clinical thinking. The game software combined with an audience response system provides a visually rich, engaging format that could be used for a review of any basic science discipline.