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Games as homework to promote student engagement in an asynchronous online course
Nazlee Sharmin1, Malav Shah2, Ava K Chow3
1Associate teaching professor, Mike Petryk School of Dentistry, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, College of Health Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Introduction:
Asynchronous online courses are designed to offer flexibility. To promote student engagement, educators at a Canadian university incorporated game-based homework assignments in an online dental hygiene course.
Case Description:
A study was conducted to describe student engagement and the impact of this intervention. Student performance data from summative exams and engagement data from the learning management system were analyzed. Results showed that students were highly engaged with the game-based assignments, created using Gimkit, the week before the course summative exams. Students performed significantly better on questions reviewed by the homework assignments compared to the other questions on the exam.
Discussion:
Although the results are from 1 cohort of students, they demonstrate the potential of game-based homework to significantly improve students' learning experiences.
Conclusion:
The increasing popularity of online and hybrid learning necessitates the innovation of new techniques to engage students online; Gimkit can be a powerful and fun tool for this purpose.
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