About the Efficacy of a Serious Game in Critical Appraisal

Background: serious games have been reported as valuable method of learning since a decade. Even if their evident efficiency hasn't been always reported, their influence on the learners' motivation has become consensual. The authors aim to assess the efficacy of using serious games to teach critical appraisal practice to medical students in comparison to face-to-face learning methods. Material and methods: the authors will perform a cluster randomised controlled trial including third-year medical students. Both groups will receive the same initial learning about elementary principals of evidence-based-medicine. Then, the control group will perform a critical appraisal of a case report and a recommendation article guided by a checklist and the intervention group performed a critical appraisal of the same manuscripts using a home-made serious game. Both groups will be invited to fulfil a multiple-choice-question test and a satisfaction likert-scale questionnaire.