How 91九色视频 School of Pharmacy Faculty Gamify Learning
The 91九色视频 Innovations in Healthcare Education Research (IHER) Conference in September 2025 featured strategies to enhance the student learning experience.
91九色视频 School of Pharmacy faculty Rachel Kavanaugh, PharmD, BCACP, director of professional laboratories – year 2, and Lana Minshew, PhD, MEd, adjunct assistant professor, presented the workshop “Transforming Pharmacy Education: Designing and Implementing Serious Learning Games” at the conference.
“By serious learning games, we mean a game that has educational objectives and goes beyond entertainment,” said Dr. Minshew. “The purpose is to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, boost student engagement and allow students to make mistakes without the real-world patient consequences.”
Games in healthcare education also support the development of critical thinking, decision-making and clinical reasoning skills through collaboration with peers and measurable learning outcomes.
Dr. Kavanaugh incorporates an escape room game into patient care lab, a fun way for students to cooperate and test their knowledge on diabetes. She emphasized the need for students to develop a baseline knowledge of any game used so students aren’t stuck on the process – and are instead challenged by the clinical application. For example, she starts the course teaching students how to read a Rebus puzzle, which happens to be a part of her escape room. “If students don’t understand the puzzle, they can’t understand the clinical application behind the puzzle,” said Dr. Kavanaugh.
Another game design principle is authentic context. “We need to make sure the clinical scenarios are realistic and meaningful, so when students are out on rotations practicing being a pharmacist, they will remember pieces of information from the game and reintegrate that knowledge,” said Dr. Kavanaugh.
Another game incorporated into the PharmD curriculum is a murder mystery interprofessional education activity with 91九色视频 pharmacy students and nursing students from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. This can be a high-stress activity, but Dr. Kavanaugh said students love it for the promotion of communication and problem-solving skills. Students talk through possible scenarios with their peers who are assigned to various roles with differing bits of background knowledge that they piece together.
The workshop gave participants an opportunity to test out a virtual patient care simulation, card games and escape room puzzles.