Comparing Serious Games and Video-Based Instructional Methods in Medical Education: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose: To compare the level of knowledge retention between two different instructional strategies (one combined face-to-face and serious game and the other a combined face-to-face and video) on undergraduate medical students. Methods: The comparison was achieve by conducting a randomized controlled trial. This trial involved 42 undergraduate medical students. First they participated in a conventional class of 45 minutes about “the recommendation for the transportation of the critically ill patients”, followed by a pre-test. Students were assigned at random to the control, video, and game groups, where they either watched instructive videos or played a serious game. After four weeks of exposure, a retention-test, containing the same questions of the pre-test, was administer to the video and game groups. The students also performed a survey eliciting students' perceptions, expectations and satisfaction regarding serious games. Knowledge test scores were analysed by the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test and Kruskal-Wallis test. The survey was descriptively analyzed. Results: The retention-test results showed that both instructional strategies (game and video) have achieved a slightly higher level of knowledge retention than the control group and in particular in the group that watched the video. Nevertheless, doing a between group analysis, no statistically significant difference (
$p=0.5$
) was observed for groups when comparing results obtained in the two points of assessment and teaching method. However, within-group comparison showed that there is a statistical significance when comparing the difference between pre/retention-test results for the instructional strategies (game and video, with
$p=0.001$
and
$p=0.002$
, respectively), while this was not verified for the conventional class (
$p > 0.06$
). Conclusion: Results indicate improvement in students' previous knowledge for both instructional strategies, in particular in the group that combined face-to-face and video class.