Gamification as a tool to teach key concepts in microbiology to bachelor-level students in biology: a case study using microbial interactions and soil functioning

  1. Aislinn Estoppey
  2. Camille Tinguely
  3. Melissa Cravero
  4. Estelle Blandenier
  5. Lucie Brand
  6. Julien Court
  7. Marie Zaninetti
  8. Saskia Bindschedler
  9. Pilar Junier

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Abstract

Microbiology is a difficult topic to teach given that the objects of study are mostly invisible to the learner. The majority of university students beginning their training in biology are more interested in natural objects that can be seen with the naked eye. Nonetheless, micro-organisms are key components of the biosphere and a good microbiological background is required for a thorough training in natural sciences. Lectures are still a common teaching format in universities. However, it is a passive learning format and no longer considered the most adequate approach in most teaching situations. Instead, alternatives consisting of more active teaching formats have been recognized to better motivate students to acquire and consolidate knowledge. In addition, transferable skills, such as effective communication, critical thinking and time management, are acquired simultaneously. A similar engagement can be obtained using games as part of the teaching experience. In this study, we designed a card game to teach key concepts in basic bacteriology and mycology to bachelor-level students. The first task consists of creating and designing microbial characters based on a list of species. This proved very useful for second-year bachelor students in terms of grasping concepts such as cell morphologies, taxonomy and life cycles. In the second task, third-year students used the characters created in the second-year class to develop a game based on an ecological function, namely forest litter degradation. In addition, they also considered experimental validation of the microbial activities and incorporated knowledge acquired in other fields.

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  1. Version published to 10.1099/acmi.0.000699.v3 on Access Microbiology
  2. Access Microbiology

    The work presented is clear and the arguments well formed. This study would be a valuable contribution to the existing literature. This is a study that would be of interest to the field and community. All comments to the reviewers have been satisfactorily addressed.

  3. Access Microbiology

    Comments to Author

    Thank you for your response to mine and the other reviewers comments. I am happy that this publication is of a good standard and thus should be accepted for publication.

    Please rate the manuscript for methodological rigour

    Very good

    Please rate the quality of the presentation and structure of the manuscript

    Very good

    To what extent are the conclusions supported by the data?

    Strongly support

    Do you have any concerns of possible image manipulation, plagiarism or any other unethical practices?

    No

    Is there a potential financial or other conflict of interest between yourself and the author(s)?

    No

    If this manuscript involves human and/or animal work, have the subjects been treated in an ethical manner and the authors complied with the appropriate guidelines?

    Yes

  4. Access Microbiology

    Comments to Author

    I would like to thank the authors for their thoughtful and careful revisions of the manuscript. This is an excellent pedagogical manuscript and an excellent contribution to the field. I am satisfied that the authors have answered all of the points I raised in a review of the previous draft. I am only sad to not being able to play the card games myself, as it sounds like a lot of fun as well as being very educational!

    Please rate the manuscript for methodological rigour

    Very good

    Please rate the quality of the presentation and structure of the manuscript

    Very good

    To what extent are the conclusions supported by the data?

    Strongly support

    Do you have any concerns of possible image manipulation, plagiarism or any other unethical practices?

    No

    Is there a potential financial or other conflict of interest between yourself and the author(s)?

    No

    If this manuscript involves human and/or animal work, have the subjects been treated in an ethical manner and the authors complied with the appropriate guidelines?

    Yes

  5. Version published to 10.1099/acmi.0.000699.v2 on Access Microbiology
  6. Access Microbiology

    The work presented is clear and the arguments well formed. This study would be a valuable contribution to the existing literature. This is a study that would be of interest to the field and community. The reviewers have highlighted minor concerns with the work presented. Please ensure that you address their comments.

  7. Access Microbiology

    Comments to Author

    Thank you for your submission to Access Microbiology and for sharing your work with the wider community. This a well-thought-out piece of pedagogy and I really like that it spans different year groups across your programme. The sci-art on the cards is delightful! Introduction This is a good introduction with relevant citations and lots of good links to existing microbiology-based resources. Comment 1 - Please can this be expanded to include a section around the wider pedagogy of game-based learning. In addition, the section between line 99-115 at the end of the introduction is too detailed, please limit this to the overall aims, and put the details and figures in the methods section. Methods The methods include lots of information but lacks clarity in places and would be clearer with some additional sections. Comment 2- Please can the first section of the methods be dedicated to the "participants". Include what course the participants were on, what module the activity was undertaken in at each level and the number of students at each level. Did this run over one year? Please include the year(s) the activity took place. Comment 3 - Section 6.1 and 6.2 have a lot of info in and they are a bit hard to follow, so I would recommend adding an additional section of "Session plan" or similar where the logics of each session is explained, what method of delivery, number of minutes / hours, year of students, total number of students in a session and where there is group work the range of the number of students in a group - maybe this would be easiest in a table? Comment 4 - this would then allow section 6.1 and 6.2 to be streamlined to more information about the actual activity. Comment 5 - the Experimental section at the end of 6.2 should be its own section in the methods and the media used added into this section rather than it being the in supplementary material. The media compositions aren't needed, please link to a citation for these. Results The resources the students have made and how they have been used between years is an innovative teaching idea. Figure 3b-f and figure 4 are beautiful! Comment 6 - on line 166 you mention an exam, as this isn't part of the paper you can take this out and instead say "The cards for Archaea (free choice) did not become part of the game." This streamlines the narrative for readers Comment 7 - Figure 3 is overly complex. Please remove fig3a&b and convert this info to a table, the the count and % for each element on the cards. Comment 8 - Section 7.2 includes student evaluation. No ethics is mentioned in the methods. If ethics has been obtained for this data collection, please add a section in the methods detailing this as we as how the data was collected (questionnaire?), and the percentage of students who completed it. Then please add an additional section after 7.2 to show the student evaluation in more detail and include the data collected as a figure here rather than in the supplementary materials. If ethics has not been obtained, please remove this data and mention of it throughout the paper. Comment 9 - the degradation experiments are mentioned in the methods but not in the results. Please add an additional section to describe what was done and to summarise the results and include a reference to table 2. Discussion and perspectives The overview of the pedagogy intervention is good. Comment 10 - please expand the discussion to include more links to and discussion of the surrounding literature at the end of the discussion. P.S. I haven't proof read the paper for typos / grammar - I'll do this on the next revision

    Please rate the manuscript for methodological rigour

    Good

    Please rate the quality of the presentation and structure of the manuscript

    Good

    To what extent are the conclusions supported by the data?

    Strongly support

    Do you have any concerns of possible image manipulation, plagiarism or any other unethical practices?

    No

    Is there a potential financial or other conflict of interest between yourself and the author(s)?

    No

    If this manuscript involves human and/or animal work, have the subjects been treated in an ethical manner and the authors complied with the appropriate guidelines?

    No: This manuscript has some student evaluation in it but no ethics. I've put this in my comments to authors that they either need to put the ethics in or take the student data out. Without the student data, the paper is sharing practice and I don't think it would need ethics to be published.

  8. Access Microbiology

    Comments to Author

    This is an excellent description of what appears to be a very engaging and educational microbiology game, and an activity that many instructors could use/adapt to their classes. Overall, I would say that the paper makes an excellent contribution to the pedagogical literature in microbiology and I hope to see more of the authors' work in this area in the future. 1. Methodological rigour, reproducibility and availability of underlying data It would be helpful if the authors could provide a little more detail on some aspects (points 2-5 below), which would allow their gamification strategy to be more widely adopted. In particular, I believe point 2 to be essential: the authors really must include more details on the methods for the laboratory experiments performed. 2. Presentation of results The authors do a good job of placing their work in the context of the broader gamification literature. The results are generally clear and well-presented, but should be checked carefully for typos in the figures and for accessibility (size of the font in the final figures). 3. How the style and organization of the paper communicates and represents key findings The paper is well-organised and clear, and does a good job of representing key findings. Some minor copyediting is required (see minor points). 4. Literature analysis or discussion Major points 6 and 7 below are merely suggestions for the authors and could perhaps be incorporated within the discussion/future directions - but are obviously outside the scope of the current manuscript. By and large the authors do a good job of placing their work in the context of the literature and discussing their results. 5. Any other relevant comments Major points: 1. Figure 1 could be a little clearer (text a little larger/images sharper), and it would be very helpful to add timelines (how long were the students given for each task?) 2. Methods/supplementary data 2 are not sufficiently detailed for replication. How long/at what temperature were the plates inoculated? How much of the bacterial/fungal strain was used as inocula for these experiments? References for the methods/growth media recipes? 3. A little more clarity and detail would be helpful for educators wishing to recapitulate these tasks with their students, or to play the game. I would suggest making the instructions provided to the students, and the cards and gameplay instructions, available as supplementary material online. How long were the students given for each task? Were the cards reviewed by a lecturer or peer-reviewed by the students, to check for accuracy? How were the decisions for homogenization made? What material is covered by the quiz cards and how exactly are points awarded during the game? Is gameplay cooperative or competitive? 4. The integration with the lab-based activities is really excellent, but lacking in some details. How much guidance were the students given in developing the experiments? Were they given protocols or did they research and develop the protocols themselves? How much class time was devoted to the experiments? Were the experiments a replacement for other lab activities? 5. The authors mention that the archaea cards were evaluated as part of the exam - it would be helpful to provide more detail here on how exactly this was done (i.e. a rubric for how the cards were marked). 6. Another area for further game development/additional expansion that the authors could consider might be the addition of viruses, perhaps especially phage, to the soil ecosystem. (This could also be an addition to the practical aspect of the class, with students given the opportunity to test the host range of some phages on the organisms used for the other tests.) 7. Another interesting area for further development might be to link the phenotypes studied (cellulose degradation, etc.) with bioinformatic analyses (genome searches for predicted cellulases, etc.) - helping the students to make the link between genome and phenotype. Minor points: 1. Some minor copy-editing needed throughout, for example: a. Line 32: consisting in --> consisting of b. Line 38: consistent --> consisted of c. Line 53: student's --> students' d. and etc. throughout. 2. Lines 156-159: it would be helpful to provide precise strain info/accession numbers for the culture collection 3. Lines 170-1: "This was done to support the students in the analysis of literature in which they felt as non-experts" does not make sense as written 4. Line 177: "fructification shape"? 5. Figures should be checked carefully for typos, e.g. "litterature" and "atibiotics" 6. I am not convinced that the colours in the bar charts in Fig 3A-B add anything helpful to the data visualisation. 7. Table 2 -it is not clear why some organisms are "N.A."? 8. Table 2 - might be helpful to elaborate with what results were expected from the literature (did the students look up/attempt to predict phenotypes for each organism?) 9. Supplementary Data 5 figure would be clearer with better labelling of the axes.

    Please rate the manuscript for methodological rigour

    Good

    Please rate the quality of the presentation and structure of the manuscript

    Very good

    To what extent are the conclusions supported by the data?

    Strongly support

    Do you have any concerns of possible image manipulation, plagiarism or any other unethical practices?

    No

    Is there a potential financial or other conflict of interest between yourself and the author(s)?

    No

    If this manuscript involves human and/or animal work, have the subjects been treated in an ethical manner and the authors complied with the appropriate guidelines?

    Yes

  9. Version published to 10.1099/acmi.0.000699.v1 on Access Microbiology