Abstract:

First year Computer Science students often begin their studies with limited familiarity with information systems, which makes technical terminology and conceptual distinctions difficult to internalize. To address this challenge, we designed an active learning activity based on educational crosswords to help students recognize, differentiate, and contextualize key categories, concepts and terms of information systems, including transaction processing systems, management information systems, decision support systems, and expert systems. The activity is implemented in a 90 minute theoretical session within the Information Systems course of the first year of the Computer Science degree at the University of Castilla La Mancha, Spain, which enrols approximately forty students. The course is taught in Spanish.

The approach begins with an individual warm up phase in which students complete a short crossword focused on foundational terminology. This initial step helps them identify gaps in prior knowledge and become familiar with essential concepts. Students then work in small groups to solve a more complex crossword that integrates definitions, real world examples, and functional characteristics of different system types. During this collaborative stage, they debate ambiguous clues, justify their choices, and refine their understanding through peer explanation. Both crosswords are created previously by the teachers.

Based on our experience, this crossword based methodology promotes active engagement, reinforces conceptual vocabulary, and supports the development of analytical skills by encouraging students to compare system categories through structured clues. By combining individual recall, collaborative reasoning, and contextualization, the activity helps students build a clearer and more confident understanding of information systems while reducing the cognitive load typically associated with unfamiliar technical terminology. Also, students seem to be more motivated for the course.

Beyond this specific topic, the approach could be extrapolated to other topics within the same course (e.g., database, business processes) as well as to other courses (e.g., programming concepts).

Keywords:

Information systems, high education, crossword-based learning.