Effects of digital escape room versus traditional review sessions with individual or team participation on medical student motivation and short‐term knowledge

Game-based learning research in the area of medical education has increased drastically in the last 10 years. It has become an area of interest because adding games to educational scenarios has been shown to increase engagement and motivation as well as improve academic outcomes for students. There are still gaps within this research, as prior investigations have not had control groups, assessed knowledge gain, or assessed motivation using a validated survey. The research described in this article has compared a digital escape room game to a timed PowerPoint review method with individual or team participation and the effect on short-term knowledge and motivation. The authors hypothesized that students who participate in the game review session or a session with team participation will have increased motivation and short-term knowledge compared to those in a traditional review session or participating alone. The results of this study suggest that an effective way to gamify a review session would be to offer a digital escape room game that allows for team participation, as this combination showed an increase in short-term knowledge, motivation, and demonstrated greater enjoyment by the participants. When used in this way, the benefits of gamified learning can be maximized by anatomical educators.