Gaming the System: Developing an Educational Game for Securing Principles of Arterial Blood Gases.

This article describes the development process for creating a digital educational mini game prototype designed to provide practice opportunities for learning fundamental principles of arterial blood gases. Mini games generally take less than an hour to play and focus on specific subject matter. An interdisciplinary team of faculty from two universities mentored student game developers to design a digital educational mini game prototype. Sixteen accelerated bachelor of science in nursing students collaborated with game development students and playtested the game prototype during the last semester of their senior year in nursing school. Playtesting is a form of feedback that supports an iterative design process that is critical to game development. A 10-question survey was coupled with group discussions addressing five broad themes of an archetypical digital educational mini game to yield feedback on game design, play, and content. Four rounds of playtesting and incorporating feedback supported the iterative process. Accelerated bachelor of science in nursing student playtester feedback suggests that the digital educational mini game prototype has potential for offering an engaging, playful game experience that will support securing the fundamental principles of arterial blood gases. Next steps are to test the digital educational mini game for teaching and learning effectiveness.

Mock webpage: an innovative assignment for second-degree nursing students.

Generating challenging and meaningful academic assignments for nursing students in which the student manages the technology used to deliver information is needed for accelerated second-degree nursing students. Developing those assignments is critical for keeping accelerated second-degree students engaged in the learning process. They are highly motivated, self-directed learners who have been found to have a preference for teaching-learning experiences that incorporate the use of technology. This paper describes the development of a mock webpage assignment to meet the learning needs of accelerated second-degree nursing students.