A board game to assist pharmacy students in learning metabolic pathways

To develop and evaluate a board game designed to increase students' enjoyment of learning metabolic pathways; their familiarity with pathway reactions, intermediates, and regulation; and, their understanding of how pathways relate to one another and to selected biological conditions.

The board game, entitled Race to Glucose, was created as a team activity for first-year pharmacy students in the biochemistry curriculum.

A majority of respondents agreed that the game was helpful for learning regulation, intermediates, and interpathway relationships but not for learning reactions, formation of energetic molecules, or relationships, to biological conditions. There was a significant increase in students' scores on game-related examination questions (68.8% pretest vs. 81.3% posttest), but the improvement was no greater than that for examination questions not related to the game (12.5% vs. 10.9%).

First-year pharmacy students considered Race to Glucose to be an enjoyable and helpful tool for learning intermediates, regulation, and interpathway relationships.