Abstract:

New developments in the field of design and implementation of interactive on-line didactic tools, and the possibilities that serious gaming offers in Higher Education programs, encouraged a team of lecturers in the MSc in Actuarial Science at the Universidad de Málaga to develop simple but effective didactic resources to enhance Actuarial education. The use of these resources is integrated into a wider project on new approaches to learning and teaching that involves several courses in the MSc program. This project benefits from a quite long experience of the lecturers’ team using innovative resources and strategies in the Actuarial programs at the Universidad de Málaga.

The approach we followed is based on the results of previous experiences in the Actuarial programs of our university, especially on the students’ comments in the assessment surveys. Although our students used to demand more interactive on-line resources, they also frequently mention a high load of work in their courses. Therefore, this current project aims to provide effective resources with a simple design, intended to be used in short sessions, that complement the general course strategy. In addition, we introduce the gamification element, resulting in the generation of two types of resources: a crossword and a word search puzzle. Both types of tools, that have been rather used in language courses, have proven to be very useful in our project.

Currently, these resources are used in three different courses (Insurance Law, Stochastic Processes and Survival Models). In each course, students have two to four resources available on line at their corresponding virtual learning environments. They are not compulsory, thus offered as complementary resources to help in understanding and reinforcing key concepts. However, most of the students carried out the crosswords and word search puzzles, with excellent results.

To achieve a cross-platform and cross-device outcome we used a combination of Java-Script and CSS technology, that allows a high degree of interactivity, using the capabilities of modern browsers. Moreover, both types of resources are randomly generated each time they are accessed, allowing being reused by the same user several times as a review exercise. Also, we offer these resources both in Spanish and English to facilitate students getting familiar with specific terminologies, usually in English language in the Actuarial profession.

The main results of the final survey of the project indicate that our students consider the designed resources very useful for their learning process, and especially value the gamification factor to reduce the usual pressure in some courses.

Keywords:

Gamification, Actuarial education, interactive.