The Effectiveness of Gamification vs. Traditional Teaching in Undergraduate Medical Education

A three- or four-player board game will be designed to teach acute cholecystitis and pancreatitis. The game has two stages: educational (houses 1-9) and reinforcement (houses 10-30). Players roll dice and move their pieces to answer various questions such as multiple-choice, true/false, matching, puzzles, and scenario-based problem-solving. Each player starts with three hearts, and if they land on one of the three red "trap" spaces and answer incorrectly, they lose one heart. Yellow spaces introduce random events like gaining or losing hearts. One space features a general knowledge question for variety. Players must achieve a point threshold in the educational section to move to the reinforcement section, and the highest scorer at the end of the hour wins. Groups of 3 or 4 students will play for one hour under the supervision of the investigator.

Students will attend a standard one-hour lecture delivered by a general surgery faculty member, covering the same topics. PowerPoint presentations prepared by the research team will ensure consistency with the game content.