Esportification of Medical Education

Proceedings of The 4th International Academic Conference on Education

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Esportification of Medical Education

Ramy Shaaban , Rodrigo Gerardo , Ellen Encisco, Todd Ponsky

ABSTRACT: 

Competitive electronic gaming or Esports has become an essential part of the contemporary culture. Esports is now popular to the extent that it sometimes surpasses the popularity of traditional games. In academics, gamification of education has become a hot topic and an approach to the design of emerging educational technology. Many pieces of literature highlight how effective it is in improving the design of the learning process. Medical education also has a chance to have gamified contents to provide trainees with effective simulated medical training experiences. Since gamification has become effective in education, the authors think Esports could also make its way to popularity in the field of educational design. In this study, the authors propose a conceptualization of the use of esports in education via the term ‘esportification’. The authors then provide a detailed action plan on how to esportify medical education. For the purpose of the study, an esports medical education game is built to provide an example for the new concept. Medical trainees’ feedback is gathered to obtain their reflection on this new concept. Grounded theory is used as a methodological base to provide a thematic analysis of the gathered data.

keywords: educational technology; esports; gamification; medical education; simulation.