89 - Cranial Nerve Card Game: An Interactive and Practical Overview of Cranial Nerve Functions

Poster Board Number: 89
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Co-authors:

Rosemary Bassey - Assistant Professor, Science Education, Zucker School of Medicine; Doreen Olvet, PhD - Associate Professor, Science Education, Zucker School of Medicine; Vanessa Reddin, PhD - Associate Professor, Science Education, Zucker School of Medicine

Abstract Body : Introduction: The pressures from a rapidly evolving technological era has brought about a widespread attention crisis in academia, hence more non-traditional approaches like game-based pedagogies in medical education have become imperative to increase students’ engagement.

Method: The cranial nerve card game was part of an integrated laboratory session on Neuroanatomy structure for first year medical students, introduced in 2022 and repeated in 2023 to review the sensory and/or motor functions of the cranial nerves. The students completed an anonymous electronic end-of-course evaluation to assess the ease of use, interactivity, and effectiveness of the cranial nerve game in enhancing their understanding of cranial nerve functions. We analyzed academic performance on the 2021, 2022 and 2023 summative course examinations to determine if the game impacted students’ performance on cranial nerve questions. Results: 90.2% of the 184 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game was easy to use, 91.8% agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game was interactive, and 78.3% agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game facilitated a more practical understanding of cranial nerve functions. From analysis of scores from 303 students on the summative examinations, the card game cohort (2022 + 2023) had a significantly higher score on cranial nerve question A compared to the 2021 cohort, however there was no significant difference in scores for question B.

Discussion: The cranial nerve card game is an innovative, simple, and inexpensive teaching tool for reviewing cranial nerve functions using real-life settings.