Abstract:

Gamification does not have a univocal definition, considering the different fields in which it is applied (e.g., education, business, or health) and the point of view of different authors. In terms of education, gamification is getting more and more attention from teachers, students, families, and educational managers. In addition, several technological tools have been developed for educational gamification, to be used by teachers and students. One of them is Genially.

In this sense, in this paper, we focus on the use of Genially by pre-service Early Childhood Education teachers. In particular, the aim of this work is the analysis of the gamified educational resources created by thirty pre-service Early Childhood Education teachers in a School Organization course related to educational legislation, using Genially. The experience is contextualized within a Teaching Innovation Project developed at the author’s institution (Spain) called "Implementation of digital games and gamification through Quizizz and Genially for learning about educational legislation and teaching materials design" (code ID2021/161; 2021-2022 academic year). For the analysis of the educational resources created, several criteria are considered in terms of format, content, and issues related to the submission (e.g., the number of students in the groups, the creation of 15 questions with a single correct option, the submission of a document with the 15 questions to Moodle, the inclusion of positive and negative feedback in Genially platform to contribute to students’ learning, etc.).

As for the results, in general, seven groups of students developed their gamified educational resource in Genially, in groups of three to five students. Regarding the analysis criteria, to summarize, we highlight that all the groups submitted the document to Moodle with 15 questions, all of them presenting three answer options. However, all the groups do not meet the criterion of one correct answer in all the questions, either because the answer is not valid, or because the answer is unclear. As for the positive and negative feedback, positive feedback appears in all the questions only in three gamified educational resources (42,9%), and negative feedback appears in all the questions in five resources (71,4%). This can be a problem in the possible use of these resources in classroom practices, considering that the adequate use of positive feedback has different advantages for students (e.g., the contribution to students’ motivation and self-regulation, the solution of doubts in the comprehension of the content, etc.). Furthermore, negative feedback can help students to know content misunderstandings or to know their weaknesses to improve them.

In conclusion, Genially can be a feasible tool to create gamified educational resources by pre-service Early Childhood Education teachers. However, the resources need to be designed with quality by teachers, about all in the case of using them in hybrid or online educational settings. For that reason, teacher training about these kinds of technological tools is needed to design good teaching materials, considering technical, pedagogical, and curricular issues.

Keywords:

Gamification, pre-service teachers, Early Childhood Education, Genially, educational legislation.