Cardiac Cycle Puzzle: Development and Analysis of Students’ Perception of an Online Digital Version for Teaching Cardiac Physiology

Abstract

Cardiac physiology is a basic subject in the curriculum of health Science undergraduate courses, which allow students to understand the functional mechanisms of cardiovascular organs as well as the physiopathology of cardiovascular diseases. The puzzle of cardiac cycle has been developed to help students to understand and integrate the concepts of morphology and physiology of normal and pathological states of the heart. Considering the good acceptance of the printed puzzle by students and professors, its online version has been developed as a digital educational tool. The aims of this work were to describe the development of the online digital version of this educational game and to evaluate the students’ perception of the utility of the digital game for their learning. The digital version was developed using the figures and answers of the original printed cardiac cycle puzzle, including stages 1 and 2, in three languages: Portuguese, English and Spanish. The digital version was tested by professors of Physiology from different university institutions for validation. The final version of game was used in remote teaching in three courses in the health area, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The opinion of students about the usefulness of the game activity for their learning was analyzed by using a survey. In the opinion of participants in this study, the activity with the online digital version of the cardiac cycle puzzle was useful for their learning.