Pharmagames: Unleashing the Power of Game-Based Learning in Pharmacy Education

There was once a time when gaming was considered a distraction in the path of a student’s progress. Today, however, educational games have shown monumental changes in the educational development of students. Courses that integrated game-based learning have seen an 89.45% increase in performance compared to those that used only lecture-based models. 

The pharmacy world has not been left behind. Pharmagames leverage human psychology to make studying easy and enjoyable. This enhances the retention skills of Pharmacy students as it can transform a mundane task into an engaging learning process.

Table of Contents:

• What is Gamification?
• Types of Pharmagames Available Online
• 6 Key Benefits of Pharmagames
• Conclusion

What is Gamification? 

Gamification is the process used to add design and game elements to a non-game context such as education, business, or marketing to increase engagement, motivation, and desired outcomes. Gamification helps in simplifying learning and encourages the active participation of students through immersive features.

Gamification in pharmacology, or pharmagames, is becoming increasingly recognized and the introduction of game elements provides an engaging and enjoyable way of learning and contributes to tremendous improvements in studying outcomes.

Also Read: Blended Learning in Healthcare: Modern Approaches for Effective Training

Types of Pharmagames Available Online

Several types of pharmagames have been introduced to pharmacy programs, and have proven to be effective in enhancing the learning curve of students. 

• Flashcards: Pharmacy education involves a lot of memorising of abbreviations of medicines which can be made easier with the help of flashcards. With this game, learning and remembering tricky full forms becomes easier.
• Drag and drop: In this type of pharmacy game, you need to drag different types of medicines to their uses. It is a classic matching game that many of us have played in our childhood and has proven to make the task of memorizing drug names and their uses effortless.
• Quizzes: This is the most common and effective type of game-based education to help students boost the learning curve. Conducting quizzes helps in keeping track of the progress of the student and also to determine their growth in the subject.
• Drug classes: Apart from digital education, some classes in pharmacy can also be conducted in the form of a game. This helps in improving the academic performance of the students as a result of a change in the teaching methods, leaving behind the unidirectional teacher–student teaching model to incorporate gamified active learning through interactive and engaging tasks.

6 Key Benefits of Pharmagames

Let’s take a look at the benefits of pharmagames, including enhanced education, improved adherence, and overall positive outcomes for pharmacology students.

1. Creates An Immersive Experience

Gamification in pharmacy education makes learning fun and creates an immersive experience for students. Pharmacy-based games boost their learning curve and increase student engagement. It holds the attention of students and augments their knowledge.

Furthermore, these adaptive experiences can be leveraged in myriad ways to provide training and assess the knowledge of students through engaging tasks. 

2. Tracking progress and feedback

It is a well-known fact that feedback and progress can do wonders in pedagogy. By conducting quizzes and challenging you can track the progress of students to give you a better understanding of their learning journey. It can give you live insights into the progress of students so that you can make changes to your curriculum and teaching methods accordingly.

This type of data and monitoring can give you a faster analysis and a direction of scope of improvement. It will accelerate the learning process and aid in developing skills efficiently.

3. Accessibility

One of the major benefits of gamified learning is the accessibility to platforms that were hindered by geographical limitations. With the help of digital platforms like Hurix Digital, educators can transform their syllabi into interactive teaching models through gamification. 

4. Technological Amalgamation

Gamification is essentially a digital solution for pharmacy students to increase student engagement and knowledge retention. When state-of-the-art technology is integrated with this it results in the best type of PharmaGames guaranteed to fuel up the learning curve. This can be done in the following ways:

• AI-driven content: Artificial intelligence and gamification go hand in hand to enable students to upskill and learn efficiently. AI helps in taking a deep dive into the knowledge retained by students and increasing their responsiveness. 
• AR and gamification: Augmented reality (AR) is an immersive technology that generates digital scenarios in the real world, creating a reality where users can engage in a virtual environment without losing the authenticity of the real world. Augmented Reality can help pharmacology students enhance their understanding of complex and abstract topics by converting them into simpler and memorable ones. It increases the motivation to learn and also aids in learning from real-life scenarios by creating a deep connection between theory and application. 

5. Augments The Learning Curve

Pharmacy education involves memorizing drug names along with their ingredients, classifications, interactions, and administrations. This can be challenging to achieve with traditional methods such as rote memorization and classroom learning.

Forming quizzes and other gaming simulations will guarantee higher retention and accelerate the learning curve. Scenario-based learning techniques have proven to facilitate participation and aid in grasping more volume of data. 

6. Boosts Student Engagement

Gamified simulations have proven to hook student’s interests and make the environment more enjoyable. Studies have shown that gamification has a positive effect on the engagement of students and has increased by 48%.

The main reason behind this is that games turn mundane and boring syllabi into enjoyable and memorable tasks. It enables the integration of gaming and teaching which creates a balance between enjoyment and education triggering interest among learners. 

Also Read: Exploring the Role of Digital Learning in Healthcare Education

Conclusion

The current world scenario has exerted a profound influence on medical education which has enabled educators to look for viable pedagogical models continuously. Gamification has proved to be a valuable addition to the pharmacy curricula as it provides the possibility of combining learning activities such as feedback, tests, and quizzes with active participation and autonomy to create positive experiences for students.

Hurix Digital‘s gamification and eLearning solutions are customizable to suit the unique needs of your educational programs. These solutions use cutting-edge technologies to ensure that learning programs are using the most effective methods to enhance the growth and progress of their students.  Connect with us and step into a gamified future with the learning solution experts today!