A Murder Mystery Gamification Session to Consolidate Analytical Biochemical Techniques Learning

Gamification has a strong track record of improving student engagement and learning in the chemical sciences. Meta-analyses of different approaches to gamification have highlighted that providing a game fiction, encouraging students to work in teams, and breaking games into smaller quests are particularly effective. Here, we aimed to increase students' engagement and learning with four analytical biochemistry techniques (high-performance liquid chromatography, sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, Western blot, and mass spectrometry) by creating a game that required them to use every method to solve a murder mystery. Our game was based on the popular games Mafia and Among Us and introduced an original game fiction relevant to our setting. Students attending the formative gamified session gave highly positive feedback. They indicated that they enjoyed the session and increased confidence in the methods involved. Free text comments praised many of the elements deliberately introduced into the game. To our surprise, the main criticism was that the session was not challenging enough. We developed a revised session that required students to undertake more detailed data interpretation, which students reported gave the expected increase in difficulty. All materials and code for running our session and generating new mysteries with original data are available online.

Automated summary

Gamification has a proven track record of improving student engagement and learning in the chemical sciences. Providing a game fiction, encouraging teamwork, and breaking games into smaller quests have been found to be particularly effective approaches. In this study, a game was created to enhance students' engagement and learning of analytical biochemistry techniques through solving a murder mystery. The game was well-received by students, who reported enjoying the session and gaining confidence in the methods involved. A revised session was developed to address feedback and increase the level of challenge.