Abstract:

Instagram is a social network, with over one billion users worldwide. It is especially popular with young people and a handy tool for reaching out to them. In this context, Instagram's outreach accounts function as classes where they learn in a couple of minutes some concept that appeals to users' curiosity.

We have established ourselves as a dissemination account of content related to our teaching, to reinforce the knowledge of students and motivate them to continue their studies. At the same time, we manage to make visible the Materials Engineering, which is still not very well known.

For this purpose, we have created the Mascot of Materials Engineering, called Mordazitas, and its corresponding Instagram account (@mordazitas). Through it, we have made different dynamics, and one of them has been extraordinarily successful, The Alphabet Game, renamed as The Mordazitas Game in its second edition.

The Mordazitas Game is a game based on scientifically accurate/real stories that narrate the events of how different creatures try to end the Mordazitas Empire. Characters like Schrödinger's Cat are the defenders of the Empire and must defeat these creatures. To do this, they must know what actions/materials/properties... to use at each moment, for which they are given a definition and the letter by which the word begins.

By responding correctly, they get in-game rewards to help them in the upcoming battles. Besides, a simple scoring system controls how well each player does, and eventually creates a ranking and a participation certificate.

All definitions refer to concepts they have seen/will see throughout the Materials Engineering Degree. In this way, we help them to test, review and even advance critical parts of the curriculum. In contrast, students have a good time using social networks.

Given the excellent acceptance among students, we want to share this experience. We want to show in more detail what The Mordazitas Game has consisted of and teach how to quickly implement it in Instagram so that all students in any area can enjoy a similar dynamic and initiate a new form of interaction with students, without losing the rigour of the teaching.

Keywords:

Social media, Instagram, Gaming, Histories, Teaching method, Mascot, Mordazitas.