MEDAGORIES – AN EDUCATIONAL GAME TO PROMOTE HIGHER ORDER THINKING

Kalyani Premkumar*¹, Cyril Coupal² & Kelvin Boechler³

¹Associate Director, Educational Support & Development Unit College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon Saskatchewan, S7N 5E5 CANADA. ^2,3 CST Program, Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science & Technology, Kelsey Campus, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 5X2 CANADA.

PURPOSE: Higher order thinking involves analyzing, classifying or organizing perceived relationships. Comparing and contrasting information is at a higher level in Bloom's taxonomy and is used by educators to encourage students to sort into categories, differentiate between, and identify similarities as they learn new material.

METHODS: To integrate the advantages of both higher order thinking and games, Medagories, a web-based educational game was developed in partnership with computer science students of the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology. While the students developed the software as part of an experiential learning course project, the author (KP) provided the requirements of the game and the content.

RESULTS: The visual interface consists of 2-4 categories. The player is given a pile of cards, with each card carrying a description. The player's objective is to sort the pile of cards according to the category named on the cards on the visual interface. Points are given for every correct answer. The game can be played in different ways – with or without feedback for every answer. By changing the database, the game can be used by educators involved in the teaching of kindergarten to higher education.

CONCLUSION/FUTURE DIRECTIONS: In this electronic demonstration, the beta version of the game, as well as the process for changing categories and description will be demonstrated. In addition, lessons learnt, benefits of such collaborations to instructors and computer science students, proposed method of evaluation of the product and future applications of this software will be discussed.