Effectiveness of an Innovative Card Game as a Supplement for Teaching Factual Content to Medical Students: A Mixed Method Study

Introduction Lectures and small group teaching are useful to transfer conceptual knowledge. Anatomy is the foundation of medical sciences, but it is perceived to be difficult to comprehend and recall. For such clinically relevant aspects of medical education that require memorization, educational card games can be very effective. As the complex concepts and terminology of Embryology are difficult to follow and retain, we designed a card game “MedFc” for a topic on pharyngeal arches. This study was planned to determine the effectiveness of the card game on curriculum comprehension, recall of factual topics among medical undergraduates, and its utility as a supplement to interactive lecture sessions. Methods The mixed method study was conducted in the Department of Anatomy of an undergraduate medical college. Ethical approval was obtained prior to beginning the study. Convenience sampling was done. From a batch of 50 first-year medical students, a total of 40 students consented to participate in the study, 24 (60%) were males and 16 (40%) were female participants. A lecture on the pharyngeal arches was conducted for the entire batch of 50 first-year medical students. After three weeks, the students who consented to participate in the study were randomly grouped into two groups of 20 each. The groups were the game group (which played the card game in teams of five) and the control group (which discussed the same topic in small groups of five). For both the group's pretests and posttests, 10 higher order multiple choice questions, were conducted and students’ feedback regarding the effectiveness of the teaching technique was obtained. Results Students opined that playing the card game was a superb experience, a positive use of time, and a very effective method of comprehension and memorizing complex topics. The scores increased from the pretest to the posttest indicating that both methods effectively reinforced the embryological concepts, but a t test showed that card game is more effective than small group discussions, with p-value = 0.008. The improvement in scores of students who had achieved <50% in pretest for the game group was statistically significant with t-value = 0.0023, when compared with the improvement in scores of similar students from the control group. Conclusions The study has demonstrated the effectiveness of “MedFc” card game in the recall of factual topics and can be used as supplementary material for enhancing learning amongst medical graduates. This educational card game applies gamification to Anatomy education to create a fun filled learning experience and is a valuable addition to the learning resources.