Abstract:

The advance in digital technologies is recently having a strong impact within the field of education. Many universities and centres of higher education are beginning to apply a type of methodology that we could qualify as educational innovation, aimed at achieving a more dynamic, motivating and successful teaching-learning process. The fact of being at the service in the training of future professionals, who will be incorporated into the society and, specifically, to the business world, implies the use of techniques and methodologies that simulate real events and circumstances that will be encountered once they have incorporated themselves into their jobs. At this point, the application of gamification is of great value through the so-called "serious games", which create virtual environments that simulate the real functioning of society and, in this particular case, in business management.

University students today, especially those studying engineering and technical degrees, seem to be heading towards a digitalized society where technologies offer great opportunities. However, in order to do so, they must be accustomed to moving and working in digitized environments. Therefore, we cannot, discard simulated learning where conditions, that are very similar to those found in everyday situations can be reproduced, which is positive for prior technical experiments adapted to engineering environments of high uncertainty, with very complex variables that, in real life situations, could lead to irreparable failures.

However, from a research point of view, it is not yet clear what is actually happening. The question is, how are these methodologies having an impact, or are they likely to have an impact, beyond achieving a more realistic and motivating learning approach? More specifically, when applied to business management, the understanding of the fundamentals of business and organizations are unknown. Moreover, this is more of a concern in technical and engineering careers, where these courses do not form part of the background of the curriculum or training program. We are uncertain whether it is helping to improve the quality of training or, for example, if new business or entrepreneurial vocations are emerging. In this paper, a group of professors, who are applying gamification in the learning and evaluation of business management subjects, propose an analysis of the opinions expressed by the students during a business competition applied as a didactic work to the students of several technical and engineering careers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

We would like to reveal the current situation regarding the application of 'serious games' as part of Business Management learning in technical and engineering careers. Therefore, we have conducted a survey among our students on the advantages and disadvantages they have found in this type of methodology in the field of their technical background. Consequently, we seek to determine whether there is a correlation with the emergence or establishment of a certain entrepreneurial spirit among the students. For this purpose, we will try to describe the entrepreneurial profile of the university students involved in this type of gamified methodology during their training.

Keywords:

Gamification, Serious games, Business management, Teaching Innovation, Entrepreneurship.