The Design and Development of Gamified Mixed Reality for Education with a Focus on the Implementation of Dental Morphology Application

The concept of using mixed reality (MR) as a teaching tool in medical education is undergoing rapid development, and gamification has become a core design tool in many educational experiences. This paper aims to demonstrate how to design and develop a gamified MR application for dentistry education in a dental morphology course lab using a Microsoft HoloLens 2 device, which allows students to experience MR using a head-mounted device (HMD) without interfering with their physical reality thus stimulating a realistic learning experience using virtual objects. In this paper, we design a gamified MR application that utilizes the enhanced ARCS model for gamification of learning, called the ARCS+G model, and apply the rapid application development model (RAD) to develop the MR application, which was built by combining imported 3D models and the mixed reality toolkit (MRTK) in the Unity game engine. Students are encouraged to actively explore different dental structures, define tooth names, and learn the FDI World Dental Federation notation by manipulating and interacting with the 3D tooth model. The paper aims to demonstrate that this MR application can positively aid in the development of a comprehensive understanding of dental morphology.