EndoGames – the use of games in Endodontics

Active methodologies have been extensively used nowadays. In these methodologies, the student is the center of the teaching-learning process. Among the student-centered methodologies, the project-based learning (PBL) is one of the most known and applied method.

PBL's aim is that the students obtain a final project as the result of their researches. In Endodontics, the student should create games with the content of the discipline. For that purpose, we divided the class in teams, and each team had 90 days to create and develop the game.

Game creation employs many abilities because during the planning, organization, and execution of the project, the students must learn on working as a team, dealing with different opinions, expressing and defending the ideas, and criticizing what they consider inadequate.

Elapsed the period for game creation, each team gives a lecture on the game for the class, followed by a contest among all teams, in which the students played with the games developed by their peers. This methodology has been used for the past three classes, totalizing 150 undergraduates, and 25 games created. Through this methodology, the undergraduate learns during all the process, from the information searching for creating the game to the playing of the game created by the other teams.

At the ending of the process, each undergraduate performed the self-assessment of the participation during the game creation and assessed each participant of the team. The teachers assessed the games regarding to creativity, quality of the material, and learning purpose.

We noted the satisfaction of the undergraduates by the increasing of 30% in the grades of the bimester during which the games were created, compared with those of the past bimesters. Furthermore, the fact of having to show a product increases the undergraduates' motivation on performing tasks with higher quality.

Prof. Dr. Flávia Sens Fagundes Tomazinho
Discipline of Endodontics – Positivo University