Abstract:

Gamification has received much attention over the last decade as a powerful tool for promoting student motivation and active learning. Thus, the educational community increasingly uses this strategy to train students to learn by playing. It is a tool capable of arousing the student's interest, transforming a routine activity into a dynamic and stimulating one.

This study describes the first observations made within the framework of a teaching innovation Project on the Introduction of Gamification in Engineering courses at the University of Jaén. Specifically, the study involves 2nd and 3rd-year students in Materials Science and Materials Technology courses taught during the academic years 2022/2023 and 2023/2024. These core courses are taught in the Degrees in Mechanical Engineering. Around one hundred students have participated in the proposed activities. The participants were approximately 80% male and 20% female, with an average age between 21 and 22 years.

Among all activities proposed, a gamified questionnaire was provided to the 2nd-year students to analyze their knowledge about a specific topics in the course: Polymers science. This questionnaire consists of ten questions and closed-response options. The wrong selection of an answer blocks the questionnaire for 1 minute as a penalty to the student. Before taking the test, the students independently prepared a series of educational videos on the two topics in groups of 5-6 members, supervised by the teacher. A control group of students was maintained who studied the topics in a traditional, non-gamified way.

Students who moved on to the 3rd academic year were evaluated on the gamified topics. The comparison of the results obtained with those of the group of students with traditional education allows conclusions to be drawn about the capacity for content retention and long-term learning developed by an educational strategy based on gamification.

Keywords:

Gamification, Learning, Engineering, Materials Science.