Abstract:

Creating Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) requires both in-depth content knowledge and sophisticated analytical thinking. At the same time, serious games can be used to improve the student’s engagement and motivation. Therefore, we piloted an online gamified MCQ-writing activity in the Master’s degree in Computing Engineering (MCE) education. The activity was implemented using PeerWise, a freely available web-based platform. More precisely, Peerwise is a serious game tool that allows students to create and answer MCQs at their own convenient times. This aspect is quite relevant in our course because it is offered in two modalities: a face-to-face format and a blended learning mode.

The activity was presented to the students as a component within the Planning and Management of TIC infrastructures course syllabus. The students were required to create at least two MCQs per Learning objective (LO) and answer four MCQs from others throughout the semester from February to May 2019. The data analytics within the platform show the students were active participants. The results confirmed that academic performance was enhanced by evaluating and commenting on others’ MQCs. We have observed that creating and sharing knowledge provided an effective and supportive learning-teaching process specially for blended students. In addition, a qualitative study based on a post-test revealed that the use of team-based learning techniques improved the engagement and motivation of all the students but specially of the blended students

Keywords:

Peerwise, MQC, Master's degree.