Gaming In E-learning

Gaming in e-learning 2

Abstract

With the emerging technology, there is that one niche of it which have always pulled all of the attention towards itself and been in the center forever since which is nothing but gaming, Gaming is the only field which had never lacked its audience from various walks of the field, From cooking games to the virtual gun ranges games which are used for military training since past 35 years, from being the time buster to gain advertence and now to the e-learning. Games have left their impressions on every page of development. This paper further discusses the usage of gaming in e-learning for the medical field.

Gaming in medics

Gaming is the running of specialized applications which are electronic games or any other video games on game consoles or on the personal computers and are hence forth controlled by an external user or a computer based program to complete it successfully. Right now there are no online medical courses available which provides practical approaches to the enrolled students, with the booming time, the strife will be widen and require more practical knowledge than traditional which can only be provided by the involvement in the procedures and not through the books

Current and past trends of e-learning

• 1800s: first correspondence course took place with the help of parcels.
• 1924: First testing machine was invented so that student can test themselves.
• 1954: The first “teaching machine” invented, which enabled schools to administer programmed instruction to their students. 
• 1960: First computer based training program was introduced
• 2006:  India’s first Medical e-learning venture was established in April 2000

It took almost 50 years to at least get started by basic online medical courses and still not have achieved the practical reality

Benefits of involving games in medical courses

• It is found that there was a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon’s capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery in the study published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery which gives enough evidence that a mere game can help in improving required skills. Since surgery’s and other operational task require many skills which can be attained or improved by implementing a small game
• The key point in involving games in e-learning is that it enhances interactions with the entity more widely than the traditional custom does, in traditional campus one can attempt a dissecting other practical twice or thrice that too in a bound environment but when it comes to game, students can use it anytime for practicing
• Games provide indefinite chances to access materials and practice upon them and give unambiguous results to the students
• Surgeries and other operational task needs a better co-ordination which can’t be found in books or by just watching a online video, games have proven a better source for it.

Current Released Games which are used in medical programs

· Microbe Invader

Microbe Invader lets medical students role-play as a busy doctor in the understaffed Happy Hospital, treating infectious diseases in the local community. This game enhances learning of clinical microbiology as a fun alternative to flashcards with 89 different pathogens and 43 different antibiotics to learn from. 

· SICKO

SICKO is a web-based game, and stands for “Surgical Improvement of Clinical Knowledge Ops”, designed by James Lau, a clinical associate professor of surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Designed to mimic real-life scenarios, players will have to cope with caring for multiple patients and be subjected to Dr Sicko’s comments and points added or subtracted based on the decisions made. 

SICKO intends to help surgeons and surgical trainees practice making clinical decisions in a risk-free environment. The game includes classic cases such as appendicitis or cholecystitis.

· Prognosis

Prognosis is a scenario-based game of clinical cases that are created from real-life incidents. With over 400 cases encompassing various fields of specialty, Prognosis provides diagnostic reasoning and key learning points for each of the cases.

Reference

1. Reuters.com
2. https://www.wikipedia.org/