Abstract:

Introduction:
Traditional teaching methods have been based mainly in theory classes, which used the teacher's verbal presentation of a specific subject as a didactic strategy in unidirectional way (teacherstudent). With the appearance of the new degrees in Higher Education, teachers need to adapt the teaching methods to the requirements of the curricula and use tools to favour motivation and knowledge assimilation. On the other hand, theory class is necessary in most subjects, so additional strategies are needed to facilitate meaningful learning or skill assessment."Kahoot!" is one of the most used applications in classrooms to motivate students and gamify learning. However, its use is often indiscriminate and not all the subjects require the same skills. Our aim was to test the utility and applicability of an ICT-based interactive tool (Kahoot!) to identify the areas in which students have learning problems, and to predict the final score and performance of the students in the subject using Kahoot!.

Methods:
Ninety-three students of the first year degree in Dentistry were included. We used one questionnaire (10 items total) which was administered by the end of the 10th theory class. Each student used mobile devices to access Kahoot! and they answered either four-choice questions in which only one was correct or bimodal questions (yes/no). They had 30 seconds to answer. The items referred to some of the theory lessons, which comprised different thematic blocks related to cell biology: cell membrane, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, vesicular pathways and exocytosis/endocytosis. All lectures were made by the same teacher. We measured individual score, correct answers and mean time to answer. We also registered their mark in the mid-term exam. One-way ANOVA (Tuckey’s B posthoc) and bivariate correlations were used for statistical analyses (p<0.05).

Results:
We did find differences in the score among the different questions used in the test [F(9,891.7)=38.73, P<0.001, η2=0.26, r=0.51]. Tukey’s post-hoc showed six subsets of questions, being the lower scored cluster the one composed by questions 9,8 and 3. Those lessons corresponded to the concepts of vesicular pathways, exocytosis and Golgi and endoplasmic reticulum transport, respectively. The best score was obtained in questions 4 and 2, related to physical plasmatic membrane and exchanges between cytoplasm organelles, respectively. When we correlated total score in Kahoot! Questionnaire and the mid-term exam score, we found a significant correlation (p<0.001), but- Spearman’s rho value was rather low (r=0.424). Thus, we could not perform further analysis in order to generate a predictive model for the final score in the subject “Cell Biology” using the total score obtained in Kahoot!

Conclusion:
Quantitative analysis by means of the use Kahoot! enabled us to identify precise problems in the assimilation of concepts in the subject “Cell Biology”, which in turn will serve to improve this particular group of lessons the following academic year. The weak correlation found between the scores in Kahoot! and the final exam did not enable us to generate a predictive model, which could be explained in part for the high variability in the strategies that student use to study.

Keywords:

Kahoot!, cell biology, dentistry.