The podcast explores the integration of gaming in pharmacy education, highlighting how interactive and immersive games can enhance student engagement and learning. Speakers discuss the benefits of gamified learning experiences in understanding pharmaceutical concepts and improving problem-solving skills in a dynamic educational environment.
The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the ASHP official podcast, your guide to issues related to medication use, public health, and the profession of pharmacy. - Thanks for joining us in this episode of Educator Essentials. The podcast where we will talk with members about success stories, best practices, and strategies for faculty, preceptors, and those involved in the education of pharmacy workforce. My name is Hannah Post, and today we'll be chatting with Megan Adelman, Family Medicine Clinical Specialist at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, about gamification of education and our upcoming educational session titled Ready Player Farm 2024 using virtual gaming strategy to improve learning. At the 2024 ASHP Virtual National Pharmacy Presetors Conference. Thanks for joining us today. - Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. - So Megan, gaming is an interesting topic for professional learning. How was this first introduced to you? - That's a good question. So I know that there's many of us out there that are interested in gaming. I certainly, I always say, and pivot to the fact that I think a lot of the times people that are interested in gaming, they wanna move away from the traditional didactic setting. And I can take no credit for this. This was actually, I come from a family of educators that had blessed them. They were always in elementary school education, so they actually brought up the gaming in the classroom then, where they were trying to engage students. And I think that this really came into play when I was seeing other colleagues where they were talking about as we moved to a virtual setting with COVID, is how do we engage learners from first year students up to residents to even colleagues in an interactive setting that's still as virtual that can connect? I think COVID has taught us a lot. And I don't think the virtual setting is going anywhere. So I was really engaged by a ton of different people that helped influence the practice. I think if you have out there any friends or family that are teachers, like I said, this is not new to them. I think it's new to medical education and pharmacy education and it is not new to our professional colleagues in elementary to high school setting. I love how novel this approach is. What are some of the key content audience members can expect from this session? So I'm super excited. I am not the only one here. So unfortunately for the panelists, we don't have Angela Goodhart who is a colleague that works done in West Virginia. She and I are gonna go through some core content. Specifically, we're looking at education in general. So we're gonna cover three main areas. We're gonna talk about escape rooms, choose your own adventure, and then the live action role play. All of those are gonna be specific though to virtual settings, which is I think something a little bit different that we don't see utilized a lot. While we both, Dr. Goodhart and myself, have utilized this in an in-person setting and we're certainly gonna be talking about our experiences related to that, we really are going to say how we incorporate this into a virtual setting and into our practice. I wanna pause and really say this is something that I think about a lot with our generation Z colleagues. As we teach learners, that's really the generation that's coming up for both students as well as residents. So we're gonna talk about some of the implications of those three different teaching points into a virtual setting and then into that generation. And while that will be the core focus of our topic, those three pivot points, we're gonna talk about a couple of different other gaming sessions. I do wanna put the plug in. One of my favorite things about this content is that Angela and I really don't do a lot of talking. What we do is we say here are some examples, go play, go have fun. So audience members will definitely get the content of what are these, but they are going to get some hands-on experience playing these games in a virtual setting as part of the audience participation and as part of this session. I love the ASHP preceptors meeting. I think it's a lot of content that is very applicable. And what we try to do in our session at least is you're playing the game, and then here is some content that Angela and I think about as we've had experience years of trying to do gaming and education. Here are some content as to the next day you could take it back and incorporate it into your education, training and practice. - So with all of these methods and all of these learners in mind, how is gaming helped improve your teaching and precepting? - So that's a good question. I really have to say that I'm just inspired by so many other practitioners and prior preceptors, prior educators that have influenced my practice and where they have really taught me is that the more I can push the learning onto the learner themselves, the better. That helps with retaining information. I think that that helps foster a process of curiosity and engagement and that's really what I'm seeing when we do formal feedback or informal feedback or surveys, the term engagement just comes up over and over again. Learners like this because they're not getting that talking head figure anymore. The gaming content either can be new material, it could be review material, but they like directly working with it. So I kind of feel like I'm a new mom. So learning is a new piece for me that I'm learning at home and a lot of it's hands on, but I like that content, the gaming and education piece. The learners are really self-driving their own learning and curiosity. A lot of the times where I do this, this tends to be what I use gaming. I use it as a repetition. So it's not necessarily maybe new content, but maybe we did a direct accession on it and then we're going back and repeating, or maybe it's material that I feel like they should know, but I can incorporate patient cases in it. It just tends to be a nice content where the learner is really driving the bus. The other piece that I feel like I get is learners like this because I'll speak from my practice setting. I use this a lot in my resident education, both from pharmacy and medical education. My medical, as well as pharmacy, they have a whole afternoon blocked for didactics. That can be tedious. I mean, I'll be the first to admit when I sat through two hour, four hour lectures, that's hard. I can't pay attention that long. That is why I like podcasts, 15 minute, 30 minute increments of short burst of knowledge. It's great. So I really encourage a lot of the times at the end, I charge the audience to really consider this 'cause I think the overall you get the engagement piece and then the overall other trend that I see from feedback is that it's fun, it's positive. So learners really like this to help break up some of the sessions. - So for our audience out there, who may be interested in learning more about gamification, are there any resources you would recommend? - Yeah, so I really want to plug, I love ASHP Preceptors Conference, which is why I'm so excited about this podcast that it's going out. To the leadership team that's running it, I really think the virtual setting has been amazing to allow for some new content for discussion. I think it's incredibly applicable. So if you are on the fence about registering for ASHP Preceptors Conference, I highly encourage you to go to your organization, go to your institution and really try to advocate to get this paid for some great content. I've only sat through different things. As a quick plug, actually one of the gaming content that really inspired me was a two ladies, Suzanne Larson and Jean Cooley also did a borderline gaming session that involved it. So that's one example of they did it in terms of preceptors considerations, but just great content in general. So if you're really excited about innovative teaching, that is the conference for you. If you're excited about gaming, I hope to see you at the session. Like I said, I feel like Angela and I really try to practice what we preach, which is we're gonna put you in the hot seat in terms of the gaming, you're gonna do the content. But then other things that I would encourage, there's some great content out there, but do not look at pharmacy and medicine only. You know, that is, I think we're just clipping the surface. There are tons of information because we're not the first to do this. Our teacher colleagues have done this long before we did. So there's some silly things like Teach Like A Pirate, which is a book that goes through different ones and it covers different content that Angela and I do not cover like Grudge Ball and scavenger hunts. And that's a great book that you can get at any store or Amazon online applications, which are super helpful if you're wanting to do a very structured environment. Kind of think about if you ever have done, for example, a Jeopardy for your education and you Google an online template. Flippity as well as Goose Chase has some great already prebuilt content, which is fantastic to use. And then the other one I'll lean into is really, there's a lot of great content on Pinterest as well as Instagram. If you're wanting to be like me, I do not profess to be that creative. A lot of the times I'm just able to incorporate ideas relatively well from people that are much more creative than I am into a pharmacy setting. So really lean into some of those online resources, but there is a lot, your core content that you're looking for if you're ever just doing a search on this is gamification or gaming and education. But I really hope to see a lot of you at the ASHP preceptors conference stop by and take a listen 'cause I think we're gonna cover some really great content that is applicable across multiple different disciplines as well as specialties. - Thanks for providing all that background. That's all the time we have for today. I wanna thank Megan again for joining us. Megan and Angela will be presenting Ready Player Farm, 2024 using virtual gaming strategy to improve learning. At the 2024 ASHP Virtual National Pharmacy Preceptors Conference on October 2nd. To find out more information about this session and the rest of ASHP's educational programming offered at the meeting, visit preceptors.ashp.org. Thanks again for tuning in and we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. We look forward to seeing you at our conference in October. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening to ASHP official, the voice of pharmacists advancing healthcare. Be sure to visit ashp.org/podcast to discover more great episodes, access show notes, and download the episode transcript. If you loved the episode and wanna hear more, be sure to subscribe, rate, or leave a review. Join us next time on ASHP official. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
