Abstract:

Introduction:
High levels of absenteeism have become one of the main problems in University education, due to the difficulty it causes in the implementation of basic active strategies such as self-guided learning. Different studies have shown that students refer to the lack of use of teachers of active strategies as one of the main causes of absenteeism. The use of gamification tools has been shown as an appropriate method to increase students’ motivation and learning. In this sense, the gamified education tool Kahoot has become one of the most popular methods of gamification in the classroom environment, allowing teachers the introduction of active learning, and finding improvements in results while being well accepted by the students. The aim of this study was to compare the levels of absenteeism obtained with the introduction of a gamified education methodology using Kahoot versus the traditional methodology of individual or group written tasks in the University Degree in Physiotherapy.

Methodology:
The Kahoot tool was used as a gamified education strategy on the Kinesitherapy subject of the Degree in Physiotherapy of the University of Valencia, with a total of 100 students enrolled. This subject was chosen for the development of the intervention as one of the main and the last of the three annual subjects of the Degree. In the presentation of the subject, the teacher explained the students the instructions and an example of its use. Besides, they were shown the schedule indicating the content of the ten sessions of the subject. All the sessions included, in turn, a presentation of contents. In addition, five of these ten sessions included the use of a gamification intervention using Kahoot. This intervention consisted of answering ten questions at the end of the session. The students had limited time to answer the questions and their score was obtained considering the response time and the correction. The results were shown for each question as a classification of students. Class attendance was assessed using the number of students who attended each class. The effectiveness of both options was evaluated by comparing means between the number of students attending the classes in which the Kahoot tool was used versus the number of students in the classes in which a traditional methodology was applied, as well as the difference between the percentages of assistance.

Results:
The analysis of the mean differences in class attendance revealed a statistically significant increase (p = .004) in the number of students present in the sessions with Kahoot (mean 70.8 (25.3)) with respect to the sessions without gamification (mean 52.6 (21.2)). In terms of percentage, there was a significant reduction in absenteeism in classes with Kahoot (mean 28.2%) compared to classes with a traditional approach (mean 47.4%).

Conclusions:
Based on the results in class attendance, Kahoot can be used as a gamified education tool to improve the participation and reducing the absenteeism in University studies of Physiotherapy.

Keywords:

Class attendance, Education, Innovation, Kahoot, Technology.