Abstract:

In spite of the fact that professors are required to apply teaching methods that encourage students to participate more actively in their learning, currently in the university stage, the passive master class is still the predominant pedagogical practice. For example, the gamification model is one of the most common alternatives for active learning at the university stage.

Consequently, the aims of the present work were twofold:
1) to describe a teaching experience about an overall review of the subject “Physical Education and its didactics I” based on gamification through a “Collaborative Space Race” challenge with the Socrative application among university students, and
2) to examine their perceptions related to enjoyment, learning and academic satisfaction.

A total of 57 students filled the questionnaire and gave their consent that their data were used in the present publication. The 57 students, 38 females (66.7%), were aged 18-24 years old (Mage = 19.3 years). Students were enrolled in the morning shift in the compulsory subject “Physical Education and its didactics I” of the first year of the Primary Education Degree at the University of Jaén (Spain) during the academic year 2020-2021. As part of the students' training, the present teaching experience was developed during the last one-hour lesson in order to do an overall review of all the contents of the subject. Because of the pandemic situation, the lesson was carried out synchronously by the Google Meet application. Based on the gamification method, during the lesson (which was called “Collaborative Space Race”), students grouped in teams were challenged to win in a Space Race challenge. An ad hoc multiple-choice quiz with four possible answers (only one correct) with a total of 60 questions was created with the free version of the Socrative application. The Space Race challenge was set as follows: 15 teams with student choice, icon of a rocket, require names, show question feedback and show final score. Divided into 15 rooms by the Google Meet application (so there were 4-5 students per group), students from each team had to do their best in the Space Race challenge. In order to increase their motivation, a challenge of approximately 30 minutes (calculated for giving, on average, 30 seconds for each word) was set. When groups were disbanded, the professor shared the ranking of the game and the teams from the podium were congratulated. Then, the students completed the questionnaire of their perceptions about enjoyment, learning and academic satisfaction through a Google Form sheet. Finally, the answers to the game were analyzed in the whole group and any doubt was solved. As regards the results, all the students reported that they had enjoyed and learned using the Space Race challenge. Moreover, students self-reported a high academic satisfaction with the challenge (mean equal to 5.5 out of 6). The 91.2% of students reported an average value of 5 to 6 points (i.e., “strongly agree” or “totally agree”). The results of the Mann-Whitney test did not show statistically significant differences in academic satisfaction scores between male and female students (p > 0.05). In conclusion, based on a gamification model, an overall review of all the contents of a subject through a “Collaborative Space Race” challenge with the Socrative application seems to be a good way to achieve enjoyment, learning and academic satisfaction among both male and female university students.

Keywords:

Active learning, collaborative learning, application, app, enjoyment, learning, academic satisfaction, college students.