Two Pills Tips: Classroom Card Games!

Cards Against Humanity/Apples to Apples
Resources:
http://www.techsavvyed.net/archives/3811
https://insidetheclassroomoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/apples-to-apples-edu-style/

What:
• Word association games
• Shared goal by all players to complete a phrase by matching the dealer’s card to a card in their hand to earn points
• Everyone has a unique set of cards in their hand, and thus the phrases can vary wildly, depending on the preference of the player.

How:
• Learners are divided into teams that can range from 4 students per team to 10 or more.
• In each round, one player (the ‘judge’) turns over the top prompt card and the others, who each have a hand of 8-10 cards, anonymously throw down a single card in response. 
• Two sets of cards— a “judge” lays a category word or phrase and participants have to secretly lay a card from their hand that they believe best represents the word/phrase. The judge selects which card was the closest/funniest/most interesting/best. The card that the judge chooses earns a point.
Who:
• Small or large groups, though smaller teams may be more engaged
• Classroom likely most conducive

What topics:
• Almost any content, usually as a review
• Any topic that has clear subcategories/topics
• So, for pharmacotherapy of diabetes, the topic card could be “DPP4’s, insulin, GLP-1’s, etc” and then students would have to use adjective/descriptor cards “hypoglycemia, weight gain, nausea, etc” and the best card wins
• For heart failure, could use each drug class as a topic card and the descriptor cards could be “hypokalemia, mortality benefit, etc”

When/Why:
• Goal of this strategy is to provide an immersive active learning strategy for review and association/correlation of complex topics.
• Though would take time to set up and print, could be used over and over
• Estimated classroom time: 15-20 minutes

Other:
• This active learning strategy, like many, requires the instructor to be comfortable with a small amount of chaos. Learners typically enjoy this game and become competitive.
• To add descriptor cards, could use “NOT cards”-so “NOT hypoglycemia” as a descriptor
• Templates available online (see links in show notes)-probably want to print on cardstock for longer-lasting cards