Abstract:

The use of practical applications and gaming techniques is now of interest for enhancing students' motivation. It could be used as a different approach to teach difficult concepts, very useful in engineering degrees, where the success rate is often very low. In this work, we have proposed the use of board games to teach concepts related to Materials Science. More specifically, different sets of questions have been prepared. These questions are cathegorized in different topics from Materials Science (i.e. solid state structure, mechanical properties, polymers, metals, ceramics, etc) and according to different board game techniques (taboo, pictionary, etc). The questions are prepared by the students of an advaced course to be solved by the students of the basic course (i.e. 4th course students prepared the questions for 1st, 2nd and 3rd course students). By this way, the students of advanced levels can review the fundamentals of Materials Science while the students of less advanced levels may use these questions to prepare themselves for the exam. The results prove that by the use of board game techniques, the motivation of the students increases whereas it is useful to better understand the basic concepts of the different subjects, which is also reflected in a higher success rate and better marks.

Acknowledgement:
This work is supported by Project "MATERIALIZING GAMES: GAMIFICATION THROUGH FAMILY GAME DYNAMICS FOR STUDENTS IN THE FIELD OF MATERIALS ENGINEERING" granted in the 2024-2025 Educational Innovation Projects Call at Rey Juan Carlos University developed by the consolidated teaching innovation group for implementarion of active methodologies in materials science

Keywords:

Education, gaming, materials science, innovation.