Figure 1 - uploaded by Angel Abuelo
Content may be subject to copyright.
Example of a crossword puzzle The crossword puzzle was presented in an html environment on computers. The clues appeared when the student clicked on a row/column. Students also had to check their answers before moving on to the next puzzle. Clues: Across: 2. Inflammation of the radicle of a nerve 5. Bleeding from the nose 6. Excessive dryness of the conjunctiva and cornea Down: 1. Surgical procedure to repair a damaged or diseased cornea 3. Persistent watery mucous discharge from the nose 4. Inflammation of the testis 7. Absence of tears; tearlessness  

Example of a crossword puzzle The crossword puzzle was presented in an html environment on computers. The clues appeared when the student clicked on a row/column. Students also had to check their answers before moving on to the next puzzle. Clues: Across: 2. Inflammation of the radicle of a nerve 5. Bleeding from the nose 6. Excessive dryness of the conjunctiva and cornea Down: 1. Surgical procedure to repair a damaged or diseased cornea 3. Persistent watery mucous discharge from the nose 4. Inflammation of the testis 7. Absence of tears; tearlessness  

Source publication
Article
Full-text available
Appropriate terminology is essential for successful communication among health professionals. However, students have traditionally been encouraged to learn terminology by rote memorization and recall, strategies that students try to avoid. The use of crossword puzzles as a learning tool has been evaluated in other education disciplines, but not for...

Citations

... • Is perceived by students as an interactive, effective, and useful tool for self-education. 34,35 • Serves as a means for continuous review, improving students' problem-solving skills, and contributing to meaningful learning when used systematically. 32 • Is considered an inexpensive, useful, and pleasant tool, particularly suited for kinesthetic learners. ...
... While the majority of the participant students in the study expressed positive attitudes toward the puzzle-solving method, they also stated having difficulties due to the anxiety about not being able to finish on time, time-wasting while solving, the inability to solve puzzles due to lack of knowledge, not liking to solve puzzles, inability to remember concepts, etc. The necessity of allocating sufficient time to students when solving puzzles and allowing them to check the correct answers has been emphasized in the literature (Abuelo et al., 2016). In a study, students had difficulties when solving puzzles because they could not remember the spellings of the concepts and they were worried about not being able to finish them on time (Abuelo et al., 2016), whereas students in another study stated that they needed more time to solve the puzzles (Agarwal and Rao, 2017). ...
... The necessity of allocating sufficient time to students when solving puzzles and allowing them to check the correct answers has been emphasized in the literature (Abuelo et al., 2016). In a study, students had difficulties when solving puzzles because they could not remember the spellings of the concepts and they were worried about not being able to finish them on time (Abuelo et al., 2016), whereas students in another study stated that they needed more time to solve the puzzles (Agarwal and Rao, 2017). The students in our study suggested carrying out reminders before the lessons that the puzzles would be solved, increasing the number of hints, using the puzzles in all lessons, and solving the puzzles as group work. ...
Article
Background The use of puzzles in education helps to improve, consolidate and ensure the permanence of the learned information and increases the motivation of students toward the lesson. Objectives This study was conducted to determine the views of nursing students on crossword and word search puzzles used within the scope of the course. Design A descriptive and qualitative design mixed-method study. Setting Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ankara, Turkey. Participants A total of 96 students who agreed to participate in the study and completed all the puzzles were included in the quantitative phase of the study while 21 students who were assigned to the focus groups by simple randomization method participated in the qualitative phase. Methods In the study, 3 different puzzle booklets (2 word search puzzles, 2 crosswords, a total of 4 puzzles) were applied to the students four weeks apart during the semester. The data of the descriptive phase of the study were collected with the personal information form. In the qualitative phase of the study, two focus group meetings were conducted and the obtained statements were evaluated using the thematic analysis method. Results The students stated that the puzzles included what they needed to learn in the lesson, that they have learned useful information and that they understood the topics they needed to learn in the lesson. Four categories were determined as a result of the qualitative phase of the study: the feelings you get while solving a puzzle, the puzzle with its advantages, the puzzle with its difficulties, and the skills I have developed. Conclusions The students stated that they recommend the use of puzzles, that lessons become entertaining, learning becomes easier, their motivation increases and that puzzles provide the memorability of information.
... Crossword puzzles improve knowledge retention (Abuelo et al., 2016;Gaikwad & Tankhiwale, 2012;Murphy et al., 2016;Nirmal et al., 2020;Orawiwatnakul & Wiwat, 2013;Patrick et al., 2018;Singh Matreja et al., 2021). However, crossword puzzles increased exam scores for some students but not others (Davis, Shepherd & Zwiefelhofer, 2009). ...
... The current results that found crossword puzzles were associated with higher scores on most corresponding quizzes coincide with previous studies that found crossword puzzles improve knowledge retention (Abuelo et al., 2016;Murphy et al., 2016;Nirmal et al., 2020;Orawiwatnakul & Wiwat, 2013;Patrick et al., 2018;Shawahna & Jaber, 2020;Singh Matreja et al., 2021;Zamani et al., 2021). However, there was not a statistically significant association between most puzzles and their corresponding quizzes. ...
... Students perceive crossword puzzles as an enjoyable, creative and innovative way to learn (Abuelo et al., 2016;Franklin et al., 2003;Gaikwad & Tankhiwale, 2012;Singh Matreja et al., 2021;Sumanasekera et al., 2020;Zamani et al., 2021). Based on the current results, our recommendation is to only incorporate crossword puzzles for those quizzes with habitually low scores for at least two semesters in the same course at the same institution. ...
Article
Full-text available
Students perceive crossword puzzles as enjoyable. In addition to students’ perceptions, crossword puzzles actually improve knowledge retention. However, crossword puzzles increased exam scores for some students but not others. Recommendations have been made for students to create puzzles for their classmates to complete with the rationale that students are encouraged to research and understand the material in order to write meaningful clues for the puzzle. While students enjoy creating their own crossword puzzles, the association between students creating crossword puzzles and knowledge retention is unknown. The purpose of this project was to determine if creating crossword puzzles and completing peers’ crossword puzzles were associated with improved knowledge retention indicated by higher scores on quizzes. Students in a research course from two institutions across three semesters had the option each week to upload a blank puzzle they created prior to completing each other’s puzzles and taking a quiz. Quiz scores were compared between those who did versus did not create their own puzzles and complete their peers’ puzzles. Results varied by institution and programs as well as the same program within the same institution but different semesters. Results highlight the importance of moving beyond student perceptions and towards assessing knowledge retention while taking into consideration institution, program, and semester.
... e potential for crossword puzzles to help students overcome their learning difficulties has been scarcely documented within dental education literature [11]. However, the use of crossword puzzles as an active learning tool in medical education has been reported abundantly during the past two decades [12][13][14][15][16][17]. As part of a curricular development effort for undergraduate dental students, this work describes an adjunctive teaching method whose main focus is to develop exploratory thinking, in order to enhance motivation toward the learning of restorative dentistry. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background: In the restorative dentistry module of the undergraduate dental program, dental students encounter many new terms and concepts in a short period of time. The provision of adequate learning support to reinforce key concepts can be challenging. Aim: The purpose of this study is to determine student perceptions of how effective interactive crossword puzzles are as adjunctive tools to enhance the learning of restorative dentistry. Methods: Students completed interactive crossword puzzles created by the authors, with a reward awarded to the first group of students who completed the puzzles successfully. The interactive crossword platform was programmed using the ReactJS framework and designed using Tailwind CSS. An evaluation of the student's perception of this educational method was conducted using textual feedback and Likert-scale questionnaires. Results: Students found the crossword puzzles engaging, meaningful, and successful as indicated by their favorable Likert scores and feedback. Written comments revealed student enthusiasm for and a desire to be exposed to more of these exercises. Conclusions: This work sheds light on the potential advantages of incorporating interactive crossword puzzles into the restorative dentistry course from a student's perspective. The crossword puzzles improved students' ability to review and reinforce concepts and terminology and proved to be meaningful and enjoyable. The web-based nature of the tool ensured good student responsiveness and engaged the entire class in an interactive, competitive setting. Application of the hint option, which offered a text of relevant reading material, helped students understand, retain more knowledge, and engage with course material more than they might have otherwise.
... One of the interesting comments repeated by several students is the fact that spelling was an obstacle while solving the puzzle. Other researchers reported similar spelling challenges surfaced while solving CWPs [50,56,74,75]. For pharmacy students, such accuracy is vital to patient and medication safety. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background Educational games make the learning process more enjoyable, fun, and create a competitive classroom environment that can positively affect learning. The purpose of this study was to evaluate pharmacy students’ perceptions of crossword puzzles (CWPs) as a learning tool in the pharmacotherapy cardiovascular module focusing on anticoagulants’ therapeutics and assessing if students’ preference of learning style influenced their perception. Methods Clues for the puzzle were developed, validated, and piloted by course faculty. A free internet puzzle generator was used to create puzzles with 10 to 20 clues. Students were given 30 min to solve the puzzle following six hours of didactic lectures about the topic. An 8-item survey instrument and Pharmacists’ Inventory of Learning Styles (PILS) questionnaire were administered to examine students’ perceptions of the game and their learning style preference, respectively. Results Two hundred sixty-seven students participated in the activity from both undergraduate programs (BPharm and PharmD) over three consecutive course offerings. Most students expressed favorable perceptions of the puzzle. Female and BPharm students had significantly more favorable perceptions than male and PharmD students on several perception items. The dominant preferred learning style (PLS) was converger (35.6%), followed by assimilator (25.3%), while 15.1% had mixed learning styles. The study did not find a significant association between PLS and students’ perceptions toward the CWP. Conclusions The CWP game presented an innovative, creative, and easy active learning tool to enhance information recall, retention, and class engagement while accommodating all learning style preferences.
... Type A compares the use of a crossword to a no-crossword condition (Kruawong & added as an additional learning activity to the regular study routine. Type B assesses the addition of a crossword over the assigned learning strategy (Abuelo, Castillo, & May, 2016;Whisenand & Dunphy, 2010). This comparison controls for previous learning experiences by presetting learning strategy to be the same for all students prior to the crossword intervention. ...
... The testing effect causes a participant to perform better on a retention test after a practice test (e.g., pretest) and each subsequent posttest. It is possible to mitigate the effect by ensuring that test questions and covered materials are not the same for pretests and posttests (Abuelo et al., 2016). Nevertheless, by giving participants just one retention test that functions similarly to pretest-posttest, one can completely remove the testing effect from design as well as further reduce possibility for other confounds from doing multiple retention tests. ...
Article
One challenge in STEM education is the learning of technical terms. In order to reason about higher-order scientific concepts, knowledge of technical vocabulary is often a prerequisite. Improving this knowledge may enhance the learning of higher-order concepts because it reduces cognitive load students experience while learning. To that end, we need innovative learning-aid tools that help students not only in learning and remembering technical terms, but also in applying the learned knowledge to broader concepts. This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that learning gained from crosswords can be used to teach technical terms. Furthermore, I am also examining the hypothesis that additional elaboration techniques will enhance the effect of crosswords. In a series of seven experiments, I investigated the effect of crossword puzzles with an add-on elaboration on students’ ability to remember learned technical terms and to provide more in-depth explanations of those terms. Across the experiments, I investigated (a) three different types of elaboration techniques, (b) collaboration vs. individual participation, (c) in-person vs. online training, and (d) short vs. long delay. Across experimental variations, results indicated that using a crossword puzzle alone produced a statistically significant learning effect relative to a control condition. Although adding structured elaboration did provide benefits when added to a crossword puzzle, it did not consistently improve retention compared to the crossword puzzle alone. Also, different elaboration techniques did not provide specific enhancement on memory retention. Implications for theoretical perspectives on learning technical vocabulary and best practices to implement crossword in educational settings are discussed.
... 10−12 Since students, on average, register less than one-third of words spoken during traditional lectures, 13,14 it is little wonder that instructors from across a broad spectrum of subject specialties have embraced the use of quizzes, table-top board games, card games, and puzzles as effective and efficient active Special Issue: Insights Gained While Teaching Chemistry in the Time of COVID-19 learning tools. 9 While this study focuses on the incorporation and evaluation of crossword puzzles as chemistry revision aids for firstand second-year pharmacy students, previous studies have described the inclusion of crossword puzzles when teaching across many disciplines, including psychology, 10 veterinary, 12 sociology, 15 pharmacology, 16 biochemistry, 17,18 biology, 19 food science, 20 nursing, 21 dentistry, 22 and medicine. 23 For chemistry, this Journal first reported classroom crossword puzzles as far back as 1925, in which, as a twist to other similar studies, the teacher, Ruth Van Vleet, very smartly and surely ahead of her time, made this a student-led process by leaving the entire design and construction of the crosswords to her students with a cash prize on offer to the member of her chemistry class that could produce the best example. ...
Article
This work explores the performance of online postlecture chemistry crossword puzzles as revision aids for 132 first-year and 120 second-year undergraduate pharmacy students. The use of these puzzles as a form of remote active learning was fortuitously evaluated immediately prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic based on students’ online study behavior patterns, which captured some fascinating data on the frequency and timing of student online viewings. Students’ anonymous feedback responses were also evaluated. Across 24 individual crossword postings, student-tracking data showed a total of 17,717 views; equivalent to approximately three views per posting by each student across the two different year groups, with evidence of some similarities and differences to student study habits when forced to work remotely. Furthermore, questionnaire feedback showed that around 80% of second-year students found the crosswords helpful and would welcome more, yet just over 50% of first-year students held these views, illustrating some year group differences. Interestingly, all students had similar opinions regarding their preferred online delivery resources should COVID-19 continue to prevent on-campus teaching. In short, chemistry-themed online crossword puzzles were well-received when incorporated immediately prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. As many teaching institutions move away from a campus-based delivery, these effective and easy to prepare crossword revision aids should be considered by instructors alongside other online resources as they plan their teaching amidst continuing uncertainty.
... Another interesting pedagogical tool that can be used to enhance active learning is crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles encourage logical thinking, correct spelling, and can motivate students to know factual information (Abuelo, Castillo, & May, 2016;Bailey, Hsu, & DiCarlo, 2017;Raines, 2010). Crossword puzzles are commonly viewed as a way to use what is known to learn new words or facts. ...
... This is in line to inculcating a culture of complex practice that allows students to apply critical thinking skills. These findings generally agree with prior research that crossword puzzles can promote students' academic performance by increased student engagement and more interaction between the lecturer and the students (Abuelo et al., 2016;Saldana-Balmori & Delgadillo-Gutiérrez, 2010). Because the crossword puzzles were part of a group activity, this study also explored the student's perception of peer learning in solving crossword. ...
Article
Full-text available
In higher education, there are calls to incorporate active learning experiences that place the student at the center of learning, rather than encouraging students to be passive listeners. For students to have a deeper and more meaningful learning experience, educators can use an active learning approach. This approach attempts to engage students at higher levels of thinking so that they are more interested in, better engaged with, and understand the course material better. The aim of this study was to investigate students’ perceptions of Plickers and crossword puzzles as low‐cost pedagogical tools to foster active learning in an undergraduate course in food science and technology. A mixed‐method survey consisting of a 5‐point Likert scale and open‐ended qualitative questions was administered via Blackboard to elicit student responses. A total of 121 students were enrolled for the course and 70.2% (n = 85) completed the survey. Plickers were found to be easy to use (mean = 4.66), provided opportunities to answer to formative questions anonymously (mean = 4.60), and helped increase participation in class (mean 4.05). The majority of students felt that crossword puzzles required them to think critically (mean = 4.53) and provided them with the opportunity to assess how well they understood the course content (mean = 4.45). Moreover, a statistically positive relationship was found between student collaborative learning and crossword puzzle implementation scores (r = .506, p < .01). The findings demonstrated that when implemented effectively, Plickers and crossword puzzles contributed to greater enhanced student engagement. These pedagogical tools can be applied as formative assessment instruments and offer a low‐cost alternative to the limitations encapsulated by didactic pedagogy.
... This investigation confirmed similar findings in the veterinary education literature. In one study, testing the effectiveness of crossword puzzles as a learning aid to veterinary terminology researchers concluded students using the crossword puzzles performed better in the postintervention test, correctly retaining more terms than the students using only rote learning (Abuelo, Castillo, & May, 2016). The crossword intervention was not a digital game; however, the gaming concepts similar to this study are applicable. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Outcomes research exists incorporating non-digital games in veterinary education; however, little research examines outcomes from digital applications. Bauman’s Layered-Learning Model was applied to investigate whether a digital matching game produced short-term knowledge gains in veterinary students. Two groups of students (n 1 =67; n 2 =55) practiced the matching game for an hour. A Wilcoxon signed rank test tested for a statistically significant improvement in pre-test/post-test scores. All statistical analyses were done using R. Mean and median pre-test scores were 15 (SD=1.88; IQR: 2) and post-test scores 16 (SD=1.80; IQR: 2). Mean and median pre-test score for Group 2 were 13 (SD=2.30; IQR=2.5) and post-test scores 15 (SD=1.93; IQR=2.5). Both groups increased significantly in post-test scores ( P value<.0001). Statistically significant short-term increases of marginal importance in histology knowledge was seen. A greater increase might be seen with quiz revision increasing difficulty and discrimination ability. Further directions should investigate long-term knowledge retention.
Article
Introduction Students-centered teaching and learning methods are the trends in medical education. Many innovative techniques are introduced and implemented to promote active learning by students, like crossword puzzles, a fun educational tool to generate interest, motivate, and enhance the critical thinking of medical students. Hence, this study was conducted to assess the perception of medical students toward crossword puzzles. Materials and Methods This is an interventional study done on II MBBS students in the department of pathology. The crossword puzzles are created, and students are allowed to solve them for 15 min after a didactic lecture. Then, students are provided with a questionnaire to assess their perceptions toward this technique. The knowledge gained and retained was evaluated by short answer questions in comparison with topics dealt with only by traditional lectures. Descriptive and analytical statistical analysis of mean, standard deviation, and paired t -test for analysis of scores of both methods are done. Results The majority of the students in this study perceived that crossword puzzles helped in better understanding of concepts, were fun education tools, challenging and problem-solving, emphasized the core topic, helped reinforcement of lectures, encouraged active learning, and improved overall thinking. The P value between the scores by only lecture method and that reinforced by crossword puzzles was extremely statistically significant. Thus crossword puzzles can be used to enhance retention and help in reinforcement learning. Conclusions Crossword puzzles are an innovative learning method which promotes active learning and overall thinking of the students. This can be implemented in medical schools as a simple, creative, and effective means of holistic learning.