MedSense: The Development of a Gamified Learning Platform for Undergraduate Medical Education

Abstract

Educational technology offers compelling educational possibilities for learners and educators: providing access to online databases, enabling simulation, and facilitating collaborative learning. Technology is rapidly being incorporated within traditional teaching methods to engage the millennial learners accustomed to technology-enhanced learning. Following the success of gamification strategies in medical education such as SonoGames in educating Emergency Medicine residents about the use of point-of-care ultrasound, we aimed to create a gamified learning platform for undergraduate medical education. MedSense is a collaborative gamified learning platform, where students can trial faculty-vetted case-based simulations and share interesting cases with their near-peers. The application is designed to benefit the learning of students and curriculum development by educators based on student performance. Amongst its key features are the case upload panel, game element, free response marking algorithm, recommendation panel and the analytics dashboard. MedSense is currently a prototype under development, which has been well-received by users. Given the success of gamification in other settings, we hope to reiterate the benefits of this education strategy with the development of MedSense.