Abstract:

Among other curricula, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid offers a bachelor’s degree in Air Transport Management and Operations. The first semester of the corresponding program includes an Introduction to Aeronautical Technology. Since the first edition, in 2018, a series of shortcomings have been identified related to the scarce students’ ability to tackle with the practical application exercises proposed in the classroom. To solve, at least in part, this deficiency, an educational innovation project has been conceived, aimed at incorporating, through gamification activities, a continuous evaluation system that seeks to improving student performance.

The continuous evaluation system consists of dividing the two-hour weekly practical sessions into three steps or levels. The first one consists of a series of test questions that the students must answer individually. They are allowed to consult the lecture notes or any other material. The questions are related to the contents that will be used to solve the practical exercises at the second and third levels. The goal is to help the students to focus on the knowledge necessary to advance to the next level. The second level consists of a common exercise for all students. They must solve what is proposed collaboratively, interacting with neighbours, with the guidance and supervision of the lecturer present in the classroom. The third level consists of a series of practical exercises for individual resolution. Each student must solve an exercise chosen at random from among those collected in an exercise bank. The idea is that the exercises at this third level are of higher difficulty than those of the previous step.

The tasks of the different levels are implemented in Moodle, through which immediate feedback on their answers will be provided. Some access restrictions are established at each level. Thus, to view the second-level exercises, it will be necessary to have answered all the questions of the first level test. Analogously, to reach the third level, it will be necessary to correctly answer a question, which works as a key pass. To answer it, some clues will be provided through correctly answering the exercises proposed in the second level. In addition to the answers uploaded to Moodle, the students must deliver, on actual paper, the developments they have elaborated to obtain the answers.

As sessions are held, the students receive performance feedback based on the responses uploaded to Moodle. However, the way of grading the continuous evaluation will be based on the detailed correction of a few sessions chosen by lottery after finishing the last session of the course, finally choosing the highest of the marks achieved. The objective of doing so is to avoid premature abandonment of the continuous evaluation scheme, since certain students who do not achieve good results in the first sessions could be tempted to discontinue their involvement in the subject, if they are already aware that they are not going to achieve a good mark. In this way, on the contrary, students are encouraged to continue with it, because they could always achieve the highest mark in the continuous evaluation. Each selected session is graded by weighing the three levels, giving the lowest weight to the first level and the highest weight to the second one. To determine the marks the lecturers team takes into account the answers uploaded to Moodle by the students as well as the in-paper developments delivered.

Keywords:

Gamification, continuous evaluation, aeronautical engineering.