Educational games are everywhere. Though most of the software bearing that label is aimed at children in the early years of school, there’s also great, though mostly unexplored, potential in creating learning games as serious teaching tools for students in higher education. Though many would raise a cynical eyebrow, I can attest to the fact that educational gaming works.

Recognizing the potential value of game-based teaching some years ago, I developed a game generator for my students in the medical sciences. BrainSpan games are asynchronous multiplayer learning games, meaning that all of my students can play them if and when it’s convenient for them. They can test their knowledge, challenge one another, interact with their instructors, and gain more information, all from the comfort of their own computers – or even their mobile phones while on the go. This kind of on-demand studying lets students take advantage of downtime for review, and the “fun” aspect actually encourages them to study! As new generations of students become more and more immersed in the digital world, I think interactive online teaching tools like these may be the way of the future – and I encourage other medical teachers to get involved, too.

How BrainSpan was born

I have been using games in my courses since about 2003 – so for most of my teaching career – but it was 10 years ago that I came across an interesting asynchronous multiplayer game developed in Tasmania and got in touch with the fellow who was running it, a computer programmer called Mike Capstick (http://cybertrain.info/). He and I decided to work together to make a new game for the courses I was teaching at the time – a medical microbiology and immunology course for nursing students, and an infection, inflammation and immunity course for medical students. When we first created that prototype game, I wasn’t able to add or change my own questions, which was quite a pain, as my Tasmanian colleague had to do everything for me. It was another year before the dean of medicine hosted a Halloween party for the medicine dentistry students – and that’s when he first heard them rave about this “really cool game” they were playing in my class. They were all competing for points and really enjoying it. At the same time, they recognized that, while they were having fun, they were also learning new material and testing their knowledge of the old.