Abstract:

Innovation has been identified as a cornerstone of the competitiveness, success, and survival of organisations. It is in the human resources contained in a given organisation, in every worker regardless of his or her place in the organisational hierarchy and the position he or she holds, that the innovative capacity of organisation lies. In this vein, how to strengthen and improve individual innovation at work is an important concern not only for business organizations, but also for educational ones, especially at university level. In fact, individual innovation is considered one of the key human capabilities for the 21st century, as well as well as the ability to work effectively in a team and contributing to the quality of teamwork. Teamwork quality can be considered as a multidimensional construct that reflects the quality of interpersonal interactions, inside the group. Its several dimensions reflect both group emergent states (e. g. cohesion) and group processes (e. g. communication). Previous empirical research showed the importance of teamwork quality to the success of innovation.

Contemporary university education is devoting considerable efforts to strengthening the teamwork capacity of its students. However, undergraduates’ attitudes towards working with others as a group are not always of a positive nature. Game base learning using serious game can be a powerful tool in this regard. Gamification - the application of gameful thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems or carrying out tasks- can favour effective learning in a variety of subjects and groups processes and interactions, as well as improving key competences both in educational as well as in labour environments such as innovation, communication skills, and conflict resolution.

The individual ability to innovate at work, and to work effectively and in teams is increasingly important in this our highly dynamic and complex business world. Psychology university undergraduates must acquire throughout their university training the competence to work in teams, as well as they are going to work frequently in teams in their professional exercise. In this context this paper deals with examining the effects of a serious game called “the group to the rescue” on undergraduates´ own perceptions for teamwork quality and their relationship with undergraduates’ levels of individual innovation behaviours. This simulation game implied for participants to be confronted with a new and a potential stressfully situation that needs a fast and effective solution as a group. The obtained results in a sample composed by 54 Psychology undergraduates that participated in the game, showed that after it, they existed significant differences regard to some important dimensions of teamwork quality perceptions. Moreover, the higher the teamwork quality perceived the higher the level of innovation behaviours displayed. These results are useful to enhance individual innovation behaviours and teamwork quality in higher educational contexts.

Keywords:

Game-based learning, Individual innovation behaviours, Teamwork quality, Psychology, undergraduates.