Abstract:

Databases is a subject of the second year of the Degree in Computer Science and Engineering, Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, of the Degree in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and of the Double Degree in Computer Engineering and Business Administration and Management in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

In this course most of the students have a first contact with topics such as modelling, declarative programming languages (by means of SQL) or application of mathematical models in computer science. In addition, the course covers different blocks that must be understood how they are linked to each other to get a good idea of what a database is and how to use it. Furthermore, it is a subject that most engineers will use for a large part of their professional life, so it is vitally important that they acquire all the competences of the course.

For this reason, an SQL competition was proposed a couple of years ago. In this competition students competed in a ranking, obtaining points after solving SQL programming problems, since it was detected that it was the block that could pose a greater problem for students, as it required a change in the way of thinking when programming.

The activity proposed on this paper consists of extending the SQL competition, which was successful among students and proved to improve their SQL skills, to the other blocks of the subject, but in a contest format. In addition, the activity, which was implemented in the aforementioned degrees, makes use of the learnings that the COVID-19 pandemic has left us, having live sessions through a streaming platform (Twitch) outside class hours. In this way, a weekly-based quiz contest is proposed using Wooclap. In each session (quiz), students have to answer the questions proposed about the contents of the course that have already been seen in class, scoring points if they get it right. This weekly format favours the continuous learning of the students and provides a continuous monitoring of them. In addition, the former SQL competition is integrated into the contest, so that the programming part can be done in a more practical way.

A total of 92 students were registered in the contest platform, what shows the good acceptance of the activity. Moreover, the feedback that has been received after a survey conducted among the students show that those who participated are satisfied with the results. A survey was also conducted on those who did not participate in the activity to ask why they did not participate, highlighting two main facts: that the schedule of the online sessions did not allow them to participate in them, and that the workload during the semester was too high. Finally, the results in the exams show that most students who participated in the activity obtained better results than those who did not.

Keywords:

SQL, Contest, Gamification, Self-learning, Streaming.