Using Kahoot! as a formative assessment tool in medical education: a phenomenological study

Abstract

Background Gamification is an increasingly common phenomenon in education. It is a technique to facilitate formative assessment and to promote student learning. It has been shown to be more effective than traditional methods. This phenomenological study was conducted to explore the advantages of gamification through the use of the Kahoot! platform for formative assessment in medical education. Methods This study employed a phenomenological design. Five focus groups were conducted with medical students who had participated in several Kahoot! sessions. Results Thirty-six categories and nine sub-themes emerged from the focus group discussions. They were grouped into three themes: attractive learning tool, learning guidance and source of motivation. Conclusions The results suggest that Kahoot! sessions motivate students to study, to determine the subject matter that needs to be studied and to be aware of what they have learned. Thus, the platform is a promising tool for formative assessment in medical education. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1658-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Learning English mediated by Kahoot: Insights from the Indonesian EFL instructors

“…This data suggests that this platform is perceived as a promising tool to support both teachers and students to strengthen greater communication among them. This finding is in line with several recent literature (Ismail et al, 2019;Licorish et al, 2018;Wang, 2015), in which Kahoot can enable social connectivity among them.…”

“…Not surprisingly, statistics reported that approximately over 50 million users in over 180 countries played Kahoot (Kinder & Kurz, 2018). Also, Kahoot allows the instructors to both introduce new concepts and assess to what extent the students master the materials through game-based quizzes in the forms of surveys, quizzes, and discussions with the high-quality of multimedia files displayed in great graphical resolution (Batsila & Tsihouridis, 2018;Felszeghy et al, 2019;Ismail et al, 2019;Plump & LaRosa, 2017;Tsihouridis et al, 2018).…”

“…Throughout recent years, many influential academics around the world have been interested in investigating Kahoot incorporated into a broad multidisciplinary context of the study (Esteves et al, 2017;Guardia et al, 2019;Ismail et al, 2019;Kinder & Kurz, 2018;Lee et al, 2019;Martins et al, 2019;Rahman et al, 2018). Those all works of literature agree that Kahoot can potentially facilitate pedagogical practices.…”

“…Numerous studies reported that the participants identified some downsides of the in-class use of not appearing questions in the mobile device, only choosing one answer, network connectivity, the time limit (Hadijah et al, 2020), and the appropriate devices (Criollo-C & Luján-Mora, 2019;Wang & Tahir, 2020). Empirical findings have claimed that Kahoot has constraints that it is only suitable for multiple-choice formats instead of essay questions (Ismail et al, 2019) and produces higherlevel anxiety among the students (Wang & Tahir, 2020;Zarzycka-piskorz, 2016). Hence, there are still open issues to be explored in the realm of education.…”

Assembly Line Education: A Novel Educational Technique for Today's Learners

“…Gamification refers to using game design elements in an effective way to augment the traditional medical education approach to patient safety and competency-based education in a way that limits learner burnout while creating a sense of fun that promotes ongoing participation and engagement [7][8]. Several forms of gamification reported in the literature include using social media platforms such as Twitter, Kahoot!, 'escape rooms', team-based skills, ultrasound, and trivia competitions [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Another published method of increasing learner engagement and retention is for senior residents to collaborate with faculty to create interactive workshops and shape curriculum development [15].…”