Abstract:

The moment we live in today is different, several things have changed and one of those inevitabilities is that educators had to arrange and adapt to the use of different tools in order to successfully communicate and transmit their messages to students.

The exclusive use of digital media has brought new challenges, both for educators and students. Educators had an initial phase, even before the institution made official and adopted an institutional tool to maintain communication, which found effective synchronous and asynchronous mechanisms so that there was no interruption of the work that was being carried out. In Portugal, almost all higher education institutions have taken the decision to end the face-to-face school year in mid-March 2020, and some of these institutions, and since that time, are preparing the next school year for it to continue taking place entirely or partially in the distance format. However, this is not a valid answer for all situations.

It is also relatively easy for an educator in a classroom, and even with almost thirty students, to understand which students are in the room following the constant dialogue, and those who are there but navigating to other addresses. In digital, it is not that easy. There are rules, and in Portugal they are very specific and do not allow students to be forced to connect web cams and microphones, despite some guidelines that indicate that if students are not obliged to do so, educators should do so, to maintain some empathy with the formal moment of the lesson.

But this digital format does not allow to solve all situations in the curriculum, nor were the courses designed or prepared for these changes to exist, but it was a remedy, which had to be revised and reconstructed for each curricular unit (UC), maintaining an approach that each case is different.

At the beginning of the next school year, and with the students of the Fine Arts and Multimedia course, face-to-face sessions will have to be promoted, where students will have to work with electronic objects, some of which will have to be programmed by them. This reality makes it necessary to work in a classroom with the group of students while maintaining all the safety requirements that these times impose.

Thus, this document intends to present a reflection on the topic of conversion to digital format, and to share a planning associated with some gamification techniques, about what is intended to be implemented in a third year UC, in a public higher education course in Portugal, taking into account the possible rules of social distance that will become a reality. It is essential that the sharing of knowledge continues and that there is a constant motivation on the part of the students for their learning and, at the same time, the educator remains motivated and happy with the work he is going to do.

Keywords:

Gamification, higher education, curriculum, practices, tangible interfaces.