Brain involvement in the use of games in nursing education

Abstract

In this high-speed world in which everything is technologically driven, higher education also needs to incorporate technology into the scope of teaching pedagogy. Aligning educational games with the nursing curriculum is one way to address the need for technologically knowledgeable learners. Learning occurs in gaming environment is experimental, and constructive. Albeit, threading them in the nursing curriculum required in-depth knowledge about understanding brain involvement in this process.  Nurse educators can thread gaming into the nursing content to ensure that learning occurs in a friendly environment. Learning games stimulates the release of dopamine in the midbrain, and the learning becomes part of long-term memory. The games must challenge and augment students’ interest so they get involved in the learning journey. The challenging environment, with clearly listed goals and ongoing feedback enhances learners’ interest and learning become part of their long-term memory. Gaming is an incomparable way of helping nursing students to learn actively and master learning skills. This literature review will discuss the phenomenon of gaming in education, the parts of brain that involved in educational games, scaffolding teaching and learning theories in designing educational games to improve and at last highlight the significance of gaming in nursing pedagogy. Use of games will open new horizon of possibilities to address various learning of different kinds of learners. This paper will act as a foundation to better comprehend the effective use of virtual world in academia.