Abstract
Video games have been used more frequently in educational settings in recent years. Research investigating the efficacy of games with an educational focus are predominantly utilised in primary and secondary school settings, but educational games with sufficient complexity could have utility in tertiary-education. Minecraft Education Edition (MEE) is an immersive, three-dimensional game where players/students have freedom to use and manipulate a variety of blocks, akin to "virtual Lego". The open world and creative nature of MEE fosters collaborative play, and the freedom to build structures, switches, and other mechanisms allows educators to create functional and interactive models of physiological systems. This paper describes how MEE was used to teach skeletal muscle and cardiac physiology to second-year university students through creation of custom-made interactive worlds. Exploration of the virtual skeletal muscle and heart were run as an on-campus activity. In the first teaching activity, a virtual 3D interactive model was created in MEE where students activated distinct processes of skeletal muscle excitation, EC coupling, and contraction. In the second teaching activity, a 3D interactive model of the heart was created in MEE where students controlled each part of the cardiac cycle. Both activities were followed by a custom-made "escape room" style quiz, followed by an in-class discussion aimed to highlight any limitations of the models. This paper explores how these virtual models were created, providing a detailed description of the learning activities, and discusses the benefits, limitations, and relevant educations theories of using Minecraft Education Edition in physiology teaching.
