The use of game engine learning as an education strategy in ecohealth

This paper analyzes an educational intervention using Game Engine Learning (GELearning) in the project Leadership in Ecohealth for Vector Born Diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean, financed by the IDRC-Canada, and whose training component is coordinated by the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico. GELearning is an educational tool that uses virtual educational games, where participants face real-life situations with clear pedagogical purposes. To learn through GELearning is to simulate situations, very similar to the ones faced in real life. The purpose for using GELearning was to evaluate it as an educational tool, to know the learning impact in participants, as well as to measure how GELearning favored the acquisition of competencies. The results indicate that this tool, besides the benefits already known from the information and communications technologies, contributes to significant learning in an environment that is attractive and stimulating for participants and favors the acquisition of competencies, especially those linked to superior taxonomic levels, which are associated to knowing "how to do" and "how to be".