Abstract:

Faced with the continuous changes occurring in society, many of them derived from the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), teachers are currently facing one of the greatest challenges in university teaching: connecting with the student body. University centers cannot remain oblivious to these increasingly significant changes, so they have to look for ways to adapt their contents to this new reality, that is, to a type of student body that is characterized by its ease of use of ICT-related tools. Faced with this new scenario, it is necessary for teachers to be aware of this and implement a process that favors the transmission of information in a bidirectional way (students > teaching, and teaching > students) and not unidirectional, i.e., teaching > students. That is, it is a matter of adapting the current teaching methodology to a more participatory context, in which the student is a fundamental part in the lecture sessions. One of the main methodologies that favors this transition is the so-called "active learning methodologies". These methodologies are a path to learning, which include a set of steps that help students to learn in an active way, thus achieving significant learning. In this sense, gamification is an example of an active methodology that favors student participation in teaching. The use of tools such as Mentimeter helps to facilitate the implementation of these active and participatory methodologies, due to its multifunctional nature. The creation of word clouds, electronic voting systems, the development of dialogues or the creation of PowerPoint presentations are just some of the functions included in this application. This tool was successfully used with postgraduate students in university teaching at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Valencia. Specifically, it was used in the subjects of Corporate Communication and Commercial Research Techniques of the Master's Degree in Marketing and Market Research. The success of its implementation in teaching can be evaluated from two perspectives. On the one hand, from the student's point of view, it was possible to increase their participation, attention and motivation in the classroom. On the other hand, from the teacher's perspective, the quality of presentations increased and immediate feedback was obtained from class attendees. The benefits achieved through the use of this type of tools in the classroom, both for students and teachers, highlight the importance of active methodologies, such as gamification, as drivers to move from unidirectional teaching to bidirectional teaching.

Keywords:

ICT, active methodologies, universities, gamification.