Environmental Scan of Educational Games for Medical Education

Abstract

Background: Educational games are digital learning resources that have been postulated to support the acquisition of knowledge, skills and behaviour. This is particularly applicable to medical education as they can provide a safe virtual environment where students and trainees can practice clinical reasoning and decision-making. Although the commercial landscape of educational games is wide, it is unclear to what proportion of available games are suitable for or based around medical education. The aim of this environmental scan is to survey the landscape of the educational game in regard to 1) commerciallyavailable games, and 2) the design features contained within them. Summary of Work: This study employed an environmental scan methodology across five areas: 1) online game databases, 2) search engines, 3) educational book publishers, 4) mobile application stores and 5) experts in the field of educational games. Educational games deemed eligible were those identified to be aimed at healthcare professionals and students with the purpose of training and education. A total of 4332 games were identified and assessed for their eligibility. 2745 games were excluded, with the remaining 1587 games included being systematically analysed against a data extraction sheet. This included topics, targeted audiences, number-of-players, genres, learning domains, sources, cost, type-of-platforms, and any affiliation with higher academic institutions or training centres for healthcare professionals. Summary of Results: The result revealed that majority of games were based on human anatomy for undergraduate students. Moreover, single-player was also popular alongside an integrated quiz that focused on acquiring new knowledge. Games were predominantly sourced from online game databases, were freely available and could be played on desktop computers. Affiliation with institutions or training centres were largely rare. Discussion and Conclusions: In conclusion, although the commercial landscape of educational games for medical education is extensive, the majority of these games were designed in a quiz genre, focused on anatomical education and aimed at undergraduate students. Take-home Messages: The commercial landscape of games for medical education is wide and is not limited to published literature. Furthermore, little is known about the pedagogical underpinnings of these games and this necessitate further investigation in later studies.