By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed
August 11, 2010 11:33 AM EDT
Toss out those fat, dictionary-sized textbooks and bring on the Wii.
An overwhelming number of medical students surveyed at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin say they would be open to computer and video games as a learning tool for their education. Eighty percent said computer and video games would have educational value, while niney-eight percent said they liked the idea of using technology in general to teach them medical information and practices.
Authors of the study, which was published online by BMC Medical Education, said the generational shift in attitude towards video games and technology in general is reason for this majority.
"Due in large part to their technical literacy, today's medical students are a radically different audience than the students of 15 to 20 years ago. They are actually more comfortable in image-rich environments than with text," said Dr. Fredrick W. Kron in a statement. Kron is a former medical educator and is the current president of Medical Cyberworlds.
The survey found male students were between four and five times more likely to use video games as a learning tool than female students. Meanwhile, 77 percent of the 200 students surveyed said a multi-player online health care simulator would be an acceptable game to play for learning purposes.
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"Role-playing games may have special educational use to help students envision what their life would be like in different types of professional practice," said Dr. Michael D. Fetter, associate professor in family medicine, in a statement. Fetter, who is the director of the Japanese Family Health Program at the University of Michigan, also said role-playing technology could help students figure out the best medical field for them.
Using role-playing games to teach medical students seems like a natural extension of the technology SoftKinetic created with Silverfit. The two companies created various 3-D gesturing games to help people rehabilitating serious injuries.
Hands on simulators, computerized mannequins and telemedicine are other technologies recently developed within the healthcare industry. All of them indicate the industry is moving to a more digitally-based infrastructure. Teaching medical students through video games would be another step in that process.
"Academic leadership has called for innovative methods to enhance how medical students access the concepts that they need to become doctors. New media technologies developed by the video game industry hold great promise to helping educators to meet that critical mandate," Kron said.
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