Digital Education and Game Development: Neurdle

I play a lot of games – Zelda and Civilization, intense strategy board games with my 10-year-old, role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, distracting apps on my phone – but I never considered developing a game until Zach London, neurologist and professor from the University of Michigan, reached out to me through Twitter. Zach is best known for an app called Nerve Whiz and an artistic board game called The Lesion: Charcot’s Tournament, both designed to teach players neuroanatomy (and a stack of other games including The Plexus, Foramina!, and Cranial Vault).

Zach suggested that we create a game to  teach others about women in the history of neurology. This was an answer to a question I had struggled with: how do you teach information that is important, but not at all clinically necessary? How do you reach the widest audience, ensuring that you aren’t only talking to the people who already care? You can write a book, make a TikTok, tweet a lot…there are many options with different levels of investment and different audiences. Games can be an excellent way to introduce people to novel ideas in a way that is engaging, fun, and approachable.

Our card game, Endowed Chairs: Neurology, features 12 women from the history of neurology – but you don’t have to know about the women (or the history of neurology) to play the game. My goal with this game is not to have players remember the details of the life of Audrey Penn, but to recognize her name, understand that she was important in our history, and feel a sense of excitement and curiosity when they encounter her name again. If players are enthusiastic (or if you’re now curious), essays are available about each of the women at the game website: www.EndowedChairs.com.  We’re now working on Endowed Chairs: Pediatrics – and stay tuned for future specialties as well.

More recently Zach suggested that we create a word game like Wordle, but with neurology-themed words (including proper names, acronyms, and plurals), and a daily neurology-related learning point: Neurdle. This is a game with an entirely different intent: to engage learners, ideally through discussion on Twitter and Instagram, where previous learning points are posted – and to entertain. Neurdle is available daily for free at Neurdle.com. 

How do you use games to teach students in digital education? What are the benefits – to you and to your students?

Putting Social Media on Your CV

Awards and Honors, Publications, Leadership… Social Media?

As more of us find ourselves spending significant amounts of time creating digital content, we will need to show potential employers and promotion & tenure committees how we are using social media in an innovative,  meaningful and impactful way. So let’s talk about the many ways to put your work on your CV.

·         Where does it go? Some people make a section called “Media,” “Alternative Media” or “Digital Scholarship.” If you have to fit your achievements into an academic CV template, you might have to decide whether your work fits under Scholarship or Service.  

Personally, I have a section titled “Humanities, Narrative Medicine, Education and Social Media” – because in my personal work history, they fit together. You can be creative!   

·         What goes in there?

o   Your professional Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/Mastodon/Reddit handle

o   The professional Facebook Group you moderate

o   Podcasts – as a guest expert, as a creator

o   Blogs, online newsletters, electronic publications

o   My CV section is more broadly Humanities/Education, so I include articles written for the online Child Neurology Foundation Disorder Directory, Game Development, Art Projects, Fiction – and the Neurology Digital Education Collaborative.

o   I include Wikipedia articles on women in medicine I’ve edited and updated, because I think that’s important scholarship.

Include metrics – number of downloads, views, members of your group - especially if impressive!

·         Did you go viral? You can list selected tweets/tweetorials, YouTube videos or  and include number of downloads, number of views/impressions.

·         What doesn’t go on your CV? Your personal Facebook/Instagram/Twitter handle or moderated Facebook group if you are not using them for professional development in any way.

CV example

For more, see Cabrera D, Vartabedian BS, Spinner RJ, Jordan BL, Aase LA, Timimi FK. More Than Likes and Tweets: Creating Social Media Portfolios for Academic Promotion and Tenure. J Grad Med Educ. 2017;9(4):421-425. article link

How do you put digital scholarship on your CV?

Social Media and Building an Academic Community

The digital world gives us previously unimaginable flexibility when it comes to physician career development. You may have considered how you can see patients by telemedicine from home, or read EEGs on the beach in Hawaii. For me, it has let me build an academic career in a very non-academic way.

After residency, I was faced with a decision: take a faculty position at a university – which had always been my plan in my long MD-PhD career – or work at a local community hospital for significantly higher pay.

All of my mentors – all of them academic – told me to stay in academia. A pediatrician said that when you see one patient, you help one person – which is great. But if you train another person to see patients, then you’ve helped more people. If you teach many people, if you change education, if you discover a treatment at the bench, then your circle of influence widens, until you affect innumerable patients.

She implied that the only way to change the world as a physician is through academia.

For a variety of family reasons, I took the position at the community hospital, thinking I would likely return to academia in time. What I am finding, however, is that the world of social media and the digital community gives me many of the benefits of academia.  

Through the podcasts I make for the Journal of Child Neurology, I have made amazing connections and have found collaborators for projects I am passionate about. Through the Facebook Women Neurologists Group, I can learn about opportunities for scholarship like the American Academy of Neurology leadership programs. Instead of weekly Grand Rounds I can follow national neuroimmunology webinars, or gather CME from #NeuroTwitter.

I found a love for research in the history of women and underrepresented minorities in neurology and medicine, and have given virtual Grand Rounds all over the country. I made a connection – through Twitter – with Zach London of the University of Michigan, and made a card game featuring 12 impressive women in neurology: www.EndowedChairs.com.

You can publish papers, present posters, and even be an editor-in-chief of a journal (I am) without being in academia. You can be on the board of a professional society (I am). I do have to be self-motivated; I do academic work because I love it and because I want to change the world, not because I want to get promoted to professor. To be honest, doesn’t everyone do this for love anyway? 

It may not be for everyone; but it is incredible to be able to build the career you want through the world of digital education.

Have you built academic connections through social media? What collaborations have you created?

Welcome to the Neurology Digital Education Collaborative!

We are a group of all kinds of neurologists – academic and private, pediatric and adult, general and specialized – who use digital education for various aspects of medical practice.

If you’re here, you probably have some idea of what we mean by digital education. From Twitter “tweetorials” to Instagram reels to video games and apps, we want to help you learn to create engaging digital content to teach medical students, residents, your colleagues, and the broader community about neurology.

We also see the opportunity to use the digital space to increase collaboration; to foster mentorship; to build careers; to advocate for meaningful causes; and to increase physician well-being through community. 

The NDEC blog is a space where you will find thoughts related to all of the above – and where you may feel like sharing your thoughts as well.