“MedChemVR”: A Virtual Reality Game to Enhance Medicinal Chemistry Education

• Published in: Multimodal technologies and interaction Vol. 5; no. 3; p. 10
• Main Authors: Abuhammad, Areej, Falah, Jannat, Alfalah, Salasabeel F. M., Abu-Tarboush, Muhannad, Tarawneh, Ruba T., Drikakis, Dimitris, Charissis, Vassilis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.03.2021
• Subjects: Curricula; Drug stores; e-learning; Education; Gamification; human-computer interaction; Information technology; Learning; medicinal chemistry; Molecular structure; Organic chemistry; Pharmaceutical sciences; Pharmacists; Smartphones; Students; Teaching methods; Virtual reality; Visualization
• ISSN: 2414-4088; 2414-4088
• DOI: 10.3390/mti5030010

Medicinal chemistry (MC) is an indispensable component of the pharmacy curriculum. The pharmacists’ unique knowledge of a medicine’s chemistry enhances their understanding of the pharmacological activity, manufacturing, storage, use, supply, and handling of drugs. However, chemistry is a challenging subject for both teaching and learning. These challenges are typically caused by the inability of students to construct a mental image of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of a drug molecule from its two-dimensional presentations. This study explores a prototype virtual reality (VR) gamification option, as an educational tool developed to aid the learning process and to improve the delivery of the MC subject to students. The developed system is evaluated by a cohort of 41 students. The analysis of the results was encouraging and provided invaluable feedback for the future development of the proposed system.