Designing together: student co-design of educational games in a complex interdisciplinary course

The co-design of educational games offers a powerful pedagogical approach to enhance engagement and deepen comprehension in complex scientific domains. This three-year longitudinal study (2023–2025) investigates the integration of collaborative game design into an interdisciplinary clinical trials curriculum. Employing a mixed-methods design, the study triangulates objective examination results with qualitative insights derived from thematic coding and computational lexical analysis. Findings reveal a consistent ‘skeptic-to-satisfied’ emotional arc, where students transitioned from perceiving the design task as a challenge to exercising epistemic agency. This process encouraged a shift from passive memorisation to active synthesis of course content. The tangible nature of the games served as a catalyst for socialised learning, interdisciplinary communication, and the cultivation of transferable project management skills. While objective exam data showed a positive upward trend in co-designed topics relative to both a historical baseline (2016–2017) and standard ‘sciences du médicament’ modules, the approach’s primary value lies in transforming students from passive recipients into active producers of knowledge. The research concludes with design recommendations to optimise the balance between ludic engagement and scientific rigour in higher education.