Educational Game to Integrate the Physiology of Synapses, Muscle Contraction and Autonomous Nervous System: Effects on Learning and Perception of Dental Students

Educational game is an active teaching method that may increase students' learning. An educational game has been developed to integrate the physiology of synapses, muscle contraction and autonomous nervous system (ANS). It has been used in Physiology classes of first semester of Dentistry course of Piracicaba Dental School (FOP), University of Campinas, Brazil. The aim of this work was to analyze the effect of this educational game on students' perception and learning and to evaluate if there is a correlation between perception and learning. The game is a puzzle constituted by one board divided in 3 columns (1‐ synapse/neurotransmitters/receptors, 2 – target organ and 3 ‐ effects on target organ) and chips to fill the columns (acetylcholine, noradrenaline, adrenaline and figures of neurons; adrenergic and muscarinic receptors; skeletal muscle, vascular smooth muscle, gastrointestinal muscle). The institutional ethics committee (protocol # 033/2015) approved this study. Students of the first year of the Dentistry undergraduate course at FOP participated in this study. After having lectures about synapse, muscle contraction and ANS, the students completed a pre‐test with multiple choice questions. After, they were divided into groups of 5 to 6 members, and received the game to fill in the columns with the chips correctly. To fill the puzzle, it was necessary to remember the knowledge about the receptors for neurotransmitters in the body, the variation of effects according to the subtype of activated receptor, the differences between the synapses in the somatic and autonomic nervous system. After the puzzle has been filled correctly, the groups were asked to discuss and answer some questions. In the following class, the students completed the post‐test. The questions used in the post‐test were not the same as those in the pre‐test but concerned the same topics. The students' learning has been evaluated by comparing the scores obtained in the tests. The students were also invited to answer a question regarding their opinion about the use of the puzzle. They were asked to indicate, in a Likert scale, if the activity with the game has been useful for their learning: 1 = it was not useful for learning, 5 = it was necessary for learning. The correlation between test scores and Likert answer was evaluated. Thirty‐nine students agreed to participated in the study. The mean score in the post‐test was higher (8.30 ± 0.34) compared to the pre‐test (7.07 ± 0.33; Student t test p = 0.02). The score considering if the activity with the puzzle was helpful to learning was 4.41 ± 0.01. However, there was no significant correlation between the post‐test and the Likert scores (Spearman r = 0.08; p = 0.62). These results indicated that the educational game was important to improve the students learning. The lack of a significant correlation between learning and perception indexes suggests that the analysis of these indexes must be improved or the effect of the game could be related to its effect on motivation and engagement, not directly on learning. Support or Funding Information APC and LTC are FAPESP and CNPq fellowship respectively. FKM received FAPESP and APS grants. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .