A Case Study: How I use game shows to teach By John Dillon (C3 SoftWorks) Most people have seen or even used a “Jeopardy-style” game to review a topic. But what about teaching a topic with a game format as your primary delivery tool? It’s quite simple and requires a little set up but I think you will find it is worth it in the end. In this article I will tell you how I transformed a lecture I have done countless times over a 15 year span into a game that when done was way more fun to sit through but most importantly it allowed me to deliver my content to a much more receptive audience. I used a game format to review what most would consider the most dreaded topic known to mankind, teaching infectious diseases. Now I am not saying this is not an important topic, it really is, and is required to be covered annually for those that may come in contact with bodily fluids or potentially infectious diseases as part of their job. As I like to say, there is only so many ways you can say blood is bad. Of course there is more to it than that, but you get the idea. To create the game I used software from our company called QuizShow (Jeopardy-style) and Billionaire (Who wants to be a Millionaire-style). Of course you could do the same with PowerPoint versions of these types of games but you will not have as many options as the commercial versions. When building a game, I went through my original PowerPoint Presentation and chose the key teaching points I wanted to cover in the class. Then I wrote questions based off the key points and added teaching points to about 80% of the questions,using text and images in the summary area of the game builder. What was really nice is the game software allowed me to import slides from my PowerPoint lecture right into the game (you can export a single slide as a JPEG or multiple slides as a SWF using 3rd party software). In some cases I used general trivia question that I did not use or reference in my lecture but these trivia questions allowed me to discuss the points I wanted to make. For example, I used a question that was open ended: What disease was Mary Mallon named after in the early 1900’s? The answer, Typhoid Mary. Though Typhoid is not a common topic in infectious diseases today, in fact I never referenced it in my lectures, but this question was simply a means to an end, I wanted to talk about hand washing and 2 other relevant points I needed to make in my presentation so the question was a fulcrum to emphasize specific points. In fact the had 4 questions in the game that related to the benefits of hand washing, this was just another way of making this point. When the big day came to present the topic it was brought to my attention that the employees did not want to sit through an infectious disease lecture. Who can blame them? To get started we had 70 people in the room which we broke into 4 teams. Before getting started we explained the rules and then got started. To help facilitate the game as teaching tool, I want to read each of the questions so people clearly understand the question, in fact the one rule we had was if you buzzed in early you got penalized 200 points. One key I have found to using a game to teach is to slow the game down so your audience has time to digest the information. After the majority of questions, I used the summary options of the game to go into more detail. In essence I took my key points that I normally discuss in my PowerPoint presentation and simply used a variety of questions and answers as a way to deliver the content. In summary, after teaching this subject in both a conventional lecture format and now in a game format it was very clear to me that the game was much more effective then the lecture format. Even though I covered the same topics and the same key points as I did in my lecture, the game format held my audiences attention much more effectively than I could have ever done with a lecture. So go ahead, make it a game but don’t call it a game. It can be a very powerful way to teach or review any topic. About the author. John Dillon works for C3 SoftWorks and speaks frequently on using games to teach in the classroom. John also is a Paramedic and has taught a variety of EMS related topics for over 20 years. You can visit www.c3softworks.com to find out more.