Pedagotchi 

In the winter term 2014/2015 master students in Applied Cognitive and Media Science conceptualized, implemented and evaluated a learning application called Pedagotchi for medical students to enhance pediatric education. The project was a project of the Entertainment Computing Group (Prof. Masuch) in cooperation with PD Dr. L. Grigull of the Medical University in Hannover.

Medical pediatric education for students is a core element of the general medical studies and consists of a huge amount of theoretical knowledge about diseases and medical treatments. Though most of these concepts have a high practical impact, they are only taught theoretically and lack of a practical use. To allow to apply the theoretical knowledge, the idea of “Pedagotchi” was created.

Pedagotchi is a mobile application for android and IOS. The main element of the application is a child which is represented by a digital animation. This child becomes sick and the student has different possibilities to examine the child by using different techniques such as X-RAY or blood count. The student must transfer the contents of the lecture to the practical cases. Each disease can be treated individually and leads to a different story and subsequent diseases. Each story can be authored by a medical associate and is automatically transferred to the main application. Additionally, several rewarding features such as badges or points exist to ensure a high motivation. Another core concept is the idea of a medical online forum which is implemented and allows the student to discuss about several cases and vote for the best answers.

The student’s task in this project was to develop the idea of the application, creating graphical assets and implementing a mobile prototype for Android and IOS using Intel XDK. Afterwards empirical research was conducted by testing the application with medical students. The results indicate a high acceptance and a great possibility to enhance medical education.