The main purpose of formative assessment is to improve students' learning and it
should be seen as a part of the learning process. Game-based learning has become more common in
the education and one of the emerging game-based learning platform used in education institutions is
Kahoot. This paper investigated the perception of students towards Kahoot as a formative assessment
tool in undergraduate medical education and its association with gender. Methods: A cross-sectional
study was carried out on first year medical students in a Malaysian public medical school. The study
employed a survey that consists of 12 items through Kahoot survey platform. Result: A total of 113
subjects participated in this study; majority was female (68.1%) and Malay (58.4%). The students
highly perceived Kahoot as fun, effective and better than e-learning platform for feedback as its
median score was 4. The rest of items were satisfactorily perceived by the students as indicated by
the score of 3 except for simplifying complex subjects that obtained unsatisfactory level. There were
significant median score differences between male and female students for motivation and perceived
knowledge retention, whereby males scored higher than females (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Kahoot is a
promising formative assessment tool that is feasible, practical and makes learning fun and enjoyable. It
can be used to motivate students to learn. However, Kahoot was not the best tool to simplify complex
subjects as perceived by medical students.