The use of mobile technology in the classroom has become an important part of today’s formal education. Over the years numerous mobile applications have been developed to enhance student engagement during lectures or test their ability to retain material. Thus, the “gamefication” of the classroom is slowly becoming the new paradigm for formal education in the United States. Evidence suggests that there is an increasing number of educators who are now incorporating active learning strategies to their lectures with relatively high success. While incorporating active learning approaches via mobile technology could be easily achieved for some didactic courses, it could be difficult for others. Healthcare related programs and particularly pharmacy students are trained to process and memorize high volume of complex information in a relatively short period of time which often represents a challenge for them. The majority of courses taught in these institutions use the traditional approach also known as direct instruction, which consist of explicit teaching through lectures or lecture led-demonstration. Unfortunately, as an educator, I have come to realize that in most cases, this approach fails to capture students’ attention and engagement for a full 50 minutes lecture period. Students become quickly bored and distracted during lectures and easily lose focus after the first few minutes of lecture. The main reason that prevents most faculty to incorporate more active learning rubric to their lecture is the lack of necessary class time to develop rubrics and active learning activities for their students.
To address this problem, “PHARMACYNARY” was developed. Pharmacynary is a fun, interactive, and engaging mobile application designed to increase students’ engagement during lecture as well as help them remember key notions of every lecture.
This game offers a unique opportunity to healthcare educators to present in a very entertaining and interactive way key concepts, definitions, mechanisms of actions, drugs brand names to their students. Ultimately, I hope to help to create a fun and engaging learning environment where students can learn and retain lecture material and increase their chance to perform well during exams so that they achieve academic success, persist in their studies, and graduate on time.
Serge Afeli, PhD, CGBP
PHARMACYNARY 