Gamification in the Medicine and Surgery course for occupational therapy and physiotherapy undergraduate students.
Amanda Jankowitz, Monique M Keller
PMID 42428520WHAT IT FOUND
A practice commentary describing digital badges added to a third-year OT and PT course in South Africa.
Students found them motivating but said there were too many. No learning outcomes, performance data, or comparison group are reported.
Key findings
01Students reported that badge-linked activities were motivating and meaningful, particularly those involving interprofessional collaboration between OT and PT students.
02Students also reported that the volume of badge-related tasks was overwhelming and limited their ability to engage deeply with each activity, prompting the course team to reduce the number of badges in subsequent iterations.
03The initial implementation of the badge system was not guided by a formal instructional design framework; lecturers retrospectively aligned it with TPACK and ADDIE models.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
No research design: no randomisation, no control group, no participant count, no pre-post measures, no statistical analysis. The only evidence of effect is unstructured student opinion and lecturer reflection, not measured outcomes. The badge system was introduced without a formal instructional design framework and only retrospectively mapped to TPACK and ADDIE. Single institution, single course, single iteration described; no long-term follow-up. The paper itself states that further research is needed to explore the long-term impact on student performance, clinical preparedness, and professional development. Student feedback is anecdotal and not systematically collected or analysed.
Declared interests
The authors state the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. No other conflicts of interest are declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the positive student feedback as evidence that digital badges improve learning, clinical readiness, or professional competence. The paper reports no learning outcomes, no performance data, no comparison group, and no participant count. It is a description of what was done and what students said they felt, not a demonstration that the intervention works. The authors themselves call for further research to validate the approach.