Abstract:

Gamification has received much attention over the last decade as a powerful tool for promoting motivation and active learning among students. Gamification involves applying the mechanics and dynamics of games in other areas to engage students and teach entertainingly. Thus, the educational community is increasingly using 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. Among the benefits described, it stands out that the study is more proactive and that the learning effectiveness is optimized.

This study describes the first observations made within the framework of a teaching innovation Project on the Introduction of Gamification in Engineering at the University of Jaén. Specifically, the initial part of this Project has been worked on during the first semester of the 2022/2023 academic year with 2nd and 3rd year students in Materials Science and Engineering and Environmental Technology subjects.

Overall, more than 200 students have participated in the proposed activities within the Project's scope. Among all activities proposed, a remarkable preliminary qualitative survey was carried out with word cloud games aimed at diagnosing students' degree of knowledge of the gamification educational strategy. This survey shows medium knowledge. Approximately 50% of the students have some prior knowledge of game-based activities, highlighting the use of the Kahoot application.

Together with this preliminary questionnaire, a second quantitative survey has made it possible to analyze and assess the attitude and self-perception of the students regarding gamification.

From the answers to this survey of 10 questions, the following main ideas can be highlighted:
- A large majority of students (which in some aspects exceeds 70% of those surveyed) agree or strongly agree with the playful nature of gamification, which can improve motivation, attention, and learning. Despite recognizing these advantages, 43% of students doubted whether gamification should be applied in all subjects.
- Most of those surveyed consider themselves competitive and agree with the competitiveness associated with games in classes. In addition, this fact is not directly related in a significant percentage to the existence of some type of reward or gratification in the games.

In view of these results, it can be concluded that, although initially, the implementation of gamification in the selected engineering subjects had a significant degree of ignorance of this learning approach, there has been a positive attitude and self-perception on the part of the students.

Keywords:

Gamification, Engineering, Materials Science, Environmental Technology, Attitude, Student self-perception.