Development of a game-based smartphone software to teach medical parasitology laboratory courses

After the Covid-19 epidemic and the problem of students attending classes, especially practical courses that are generally not available to online system which require physical presence at the school, hence the need to use new technologies for e-learning and distance learning was further considered. Therefore, in order to provide appropriate and qualified laboratory courses in medical parasitology and also to see the diagnostic slides of different parasites, we developed a mobile game-based software which enabled students to move virtually in the laboratory and view different diagnostic slides. The results showed that educational concepts, including detection of the parasite slides as well as theoretical concepts related to each can be provided to students through smartphone’ game-based software. In terms of user experience, this tool seems to be easy to use for people who are already familiar with the environment of field games and field movement, however, for people unfamiliar with how to control the space of environmental games, it seems somewhat strange and complex.