Dietetic education in the 21st Century: is it all just fun and games?

Globally the higher education (HE) sector is including more technologyrich learning environments for the twenty first century student. Today’slearners are uniquely different from previous generations as they havegrown-up immersed in digital technology which impacts the way weteach in HE. This study aims to shed light on academic and studentperceptions on the value of online serious games (SG) and usability asa learning tool. This study forms part of a bigger project to develop anonline SG to assist the development of clinical reasoning skills of stu-dent dietitians. Separate online surveys were developed informed by lit-erature and focus group discussions with academics and student.Surveys were deployed through Survey Monkey®to all University ofthe Sunshine Coast students and Academics on the Sippy Downs cam-pus in Queensland, Australia. Key findings include that all students(n = 49) and most academics (n = 14, 93%) want to use SG in theircourse/s if it has a clear fit for purpose. Students want to use SG toapply knowledge to a real-life scenario (90%), to practise skills (88%),orientate them to a real-life environment (74%), and for assessment(52%). Conversely, most academics tied the use of SG to assessment(92%) or an optional extracurricular activity (67%). Barriers to useonline SGs reported by academics included limited support, lack ofresource, and availability. These findings provide an interesting per-spective on differences in perceptions between academics and studentson how serious games can be integrated into curriculum, highlightspotential barriers, and provide recommendation on its use in relationto assessment.