Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Oct 15, 2025
Date Accepted: May 16, 2026
The Impact of Gamified Teaching on Undergraduate Nursing Students' Disaster Nursing Competence, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Directed Learning Ability: A Quasi-Experimental Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Gamified teaching is considered an effective strategy to enhance learning motivation; however, there is still a lack of research that systematically designs it based on learning theories, applies it to disaster nursing courses, and empirically evaluates its impact on the comprehensive competence of undergraduate nursing students.
Objective:
Compare the effects of traditional and scenario-based gamified teaching on disaster nursing competence, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning ability among undergraduate nursing students.
Methods:
Using a Cluster randomized controlled trial, a total of two classes comprising 132 undergraduate nursing students were recruited and divided into two groups based on class. The control group (n=66) received traditional teaching, while the experimental group (n=66) received gamified teaching. Participants’ disaster nursing competence, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning ability were assessed before the experiment, after the experiment, and one week after the experiment.
Results:
Compared with the control group, the experimental group showed a significant improvement in disaster nursing capability, with a significant group-by-time interaction effect (F=3.618, p=0.030). The experimental group demonstrated higher self-directed learning ability than the control group, particularly in collaborative learning, which was statistically significant (F=5.098, p=0.007). In addition, there was no statistically significant difference in self-efficacy between the two groups.
Conclusions:
Compared with traditional teaching methods, gamified teaching can effectively enhance the disaster nursing competence and self-directed learning ability of undergraduate nursing students, with significant short-term results. Although no obvious differences in self-efficacy were observed, the application of gamified teaching in disaster nursing courses has shown potential to improve undergraduate nursing students’disaster nursing capabilities. It is recommended that more replication studies be conducted in the future to verify the long-term sustainability and generalizability of the effects of gamified teaching. Clinical Trial: IRB No.: S20250331-01
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