From an initial interest in creating a histology game and some rough drawings on the back of playing cards, Frankie Macmillan and Zoe Palmer have created a fun and exciting way to teach a subject that students find hard to engage with.
Histology is taught on medical, veterinary and dental courses but many students find it a challenging subject. Frankie and Zoe hope to use this game to change perceptions; to make histology more fun and to help students engage.
After designing the basic concept and creating a simple test pack, Zoe and Frankie secured Discretionary Seedcorn funding from BILT in January and started developing their game.
Histo-link is a picture card game in which students make links between different images of cells, tissues and organs. A player lays a card and the next player has to lay a card that links to it. For example, an image of the spinal cord could be followed by an image of a nerve cell, or a section of peripheral nerves. If the students cannot make an obvious link, they can chose to try a more obscure link, but another player could challenge it. The rest of the group then discuss whether they think the link is factually correct. If it isn’t, the student has to ‘pay’ a counter to the challenger, as a penalty for a poor link. If it is deemed to be a good link the challenger must pay a counter as a penalty. The game continues until players have laid all their cards, the player with the most counters at the end wins. Students can also spend their counters (shaped like red blood cells) by buying an answer from the other players, or the associated crib sheet if they cannot identify one of their cards. The game contains sixty cards and each player starts with five red blood cell counters.
Initial feedback from students is very promising. Every single student that attended a test session (31 students) would recommend the game to a fellow student and said that the game would improve their knowledge of histology. Almost all the students found that the game was pitched at the right level and that it was easy to play. Three test sessions were run; some students from each session were interested in buying the game – leading Frankie and Zoe to consider the possibility that the game could be sold to students and even to other universities! Students in the test sessions were given simple instructions but were not directly told how to play. Zoe and Frankie had expected them to play competitively as individuals, but some students played collaboratively, with their cards laid flat on the table, working together.
Although the game is still in testing phase, Frankie and Zoe have plans for how it will be embedded in teaching across year groups. First years could play in teams of two or three, with students playing as individuals in second year as their confidence in their histology knowledge builds. Students won’t necessarily be given all the cards in first year to ensure that they play using cards relating to the teaching they have had, with more cards being added into game as they learn more throughout the year. The adding and removal of cards is a simple way to differentiate learning with this game. The flexibility of Histo-link is one of its best features and means it can be a valuable resource for a student through their entire degree.
The game won’t replace the current method of teaching histology, Zoe says, but will make for a great revision tool and might help to demonstrate that histology can be an enjoyable subject to learn! Having to create links between the different images means the students not only have to identify sections but they also have to apply logic and reasoning to make the connections. This strengthens their understanding of histology which can then be applied to other areas of the curriculum. Teaching something is one of the best ways to learn and Histo-link does exactly this – students in the test sessions challenged each other and discussed their answers – something which doesn’t always happen during normal teaching activity. Frankie and Zoe not only hope that this game will help students to get excited about histology, but that it might even inspire some histopathologists of the future!