Abstract:

In an increasingly digital age, it becomes clear the need to adapt the processes and teaching / learning methodologies, adapting to the profile of the students that we typically find in Higher Education. In fact, there are several studies that prove the advantages of a teaching / learning supported in visual / multimedia objects, that allow the interaction of the students with the process itself, increasing the interest and motivation of the students, which allows to increase their motivation and participation in its process of developing skills.

In this context, a platform was developed at the Escola Superior de Media Artes e Design (Polytechnic of Porto) to support the definition of (personalized) teaching / learning paths based on learning objects (essentially videos) to develop the students’ skills in a given area, increasing their participation and motivation, and adapted in time and space to the characteristics of each one.

The platform is an application that allows to define learning pathways based on learning objects (videos) available on the Internet, or locally produced, and fulfilling the following requirements:
i) it includes a set of categories / tags, which allow to categorize and organize the topics of a learning path (which may correspond, for example, to a subject, with a description, objectives, goals and expected results);
ii) the definition of learning paths, consisting of a sequence of videos, practical exercises, challenges, quizzes, that students must fulfill in order to achieve the defined goals, which allows them to earn points in a concept close to gamification;
iii) to point out and comment on the learning paths made;
iv) recommendation of learning paths according to the history and results obtained by each student, thus personalizing the course of each student, adapting it to the needs of each one.

The platform was tested, through a case study, in a discipline of the Degree in technologies and information systems for the web, for one semester.

In this article we present the processes and teaching / learning methodologies that guided the development of this tool, based on concepts of gamification, recognition and reward, personalized and adaptive teaching. The main features and functionalities of the developed tool are described in this paper, followed by the methodology adopted in the implementation of the case study. The results obtained are presented as well as their analysis and discussion. The paper also includes a small questionnaire survey carried out among the students, seeking to understand their degree of satisfaction with iniciative, the main difficulties felt, as well as other aspects related to the adoption of this gamification strategy. The article ends with some conclusions and points out some directions of future work.

Keywords:

Gamification, higher education, learning methodologies, personalized learning.