Students as partners: A novel approach to developing a gamified anatomical learning toolkit using design thinking principles.

Abstract

The practice of involving students in designing pedagogical resources, including gamified learning tools, is often underutilized. Traditionally, students are engaged in usability and efficacy testing of finalized learning tools, limiting their ability to shape the learning experience from inception. However, adopting a Students as Partners (SAP) approach allows for their involvement earlier and throughout the design and development process. Design thinking offers a structured methodology to optimize this partnership, providing a learner-centered approach to creating gamified learning tools with students for students. This process fosters a deep understanding of students' needs (empathizing and defining learners' needs), incorporates their ideas (challenging assumptions and idea creation), and enables iterative feedback (involvement in prototyping and testing). In this article, we describe how the design thinking methodology, in collaboration with SAP, was utilized to develop Anat-O-MEE, a gamified learning toolkit designed to enhance students' three-dimensional (3D) spatial reasoning skills in anatomy. The toolkit consists of three scaffolded levels-Map, Explore, and Extrapolate-which progressively support the transition from 2D to 3D anatomical understanding. Student partners played an active role in user-interface testing, functionality assessments, and alpha testing of games and tasks, contributing to iterative refinements in both design and content.