Why they’re turning nurses into competitive gamers at Mercy Medical Center

At Mercy Medical Center, Stacey Brull found that clinical training worked better as an adventure.
Working with Mindgrub, Brull, the medical facility’s senior director of research, education and magnet developed a game to train nurses. Overall, the game provides the same content as traditional training, but it’s presented within another realm of ruins, jungles and mountains to traverse. Nurses have a leaderboard. Plus, there is epic language to describe it.
“…Only the most worthy complete the demanding journey,” the prompt reads.
Brull said it’s helped nurses retain information, and it takes less time than the training.
“Their evaluations are much more positive and they get to the unit so much faster,” Brull said.
The gamification is one of a variety of new approaches to teaching and learning that were on display at the Education Technology Innovation Summit (ETIS), which was hosted at Mindgrub’s office in Locust Point during Baltimore Innovation Week 2016. Sessions examined virtual reality, finance, design thinking and making.

Drones in the classroom! Engaging students in asking big questions using tech with @WorkbenchPlat at #ETIS16 pic.twitter.com/woLzLI6hIP

— Leslie McBeth (@lesmcbeth) September 28, 2016

Of course, there were also apps. Jim Liew, a finance professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, offered a tutorial on an app that allows a student in a course to give feedback about whether they understand the material being offered. Podium, as it’s called, lets the students weigh in, and allows instructors to adjust their material in real time, he said.
Another presentation showed that bringing students into the process of creating something fun was a way to engage them. A Howard County Library System program called HiTech gives students ages 11 to 18 a chance to get experience building games. They’ve since released Escape from Detention and Cyborg Glitch on the App Store.