Abstract:

As long as human beings can remember, games have been conceived in order to get fun and as pastime for free time. With the quick and significant advance of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), these traditional games have been relegated to the background. These games, that several years ago were very well-known among students, currently they are not popular anymore. University students are more focused on mobile apps and digital games rather than these out-of-date games. As students are unfamiliar with these traditional games, teachers have recovered them in order to be applied at master degree level with the main objective of “learning while playing”. The traditional games implemented in the master degree classes are the hangman word-guessing and crossword games. There are different online tools that offer the possibility to configure customized hangman and crossword games in order to be adapted to the different subjects and lessons. The present paper proposes and analyzes a set of online tools that support the creation of customized hangman word-guessing and crossword games. Moreover, a use case implementing the proposed online tools is described in the context of an Engineering Master Degree, more particularly in the subject of “Demand and Supply Management” and in the lesson related to replenishment approaches.

After performing both games (designed through the proposed online tools) in different sessions, we can conclude that the students’ assessment is very positive and this kind of practice reinforces the students’ knowledge gained in the master classes.

In this regard, the paper is organised as follows: Section 1 introduces the trends toward the traditional and current learning games. Section 2 proposes an overview of the traditional games selected to reinforce the knowledge learned in the master classes. Section 3 focuses on the identification of a set of online resources to configure hangman word-guessing and crossword games. Section 4 proposes a case study showing how these two games are applied at the university covering the examples used in the master degree. Section 5 concludes the paper by discussing the students’ attitude, as well as, how the proposed traditional games strengthen their knowledge.

Keywords:

Traditional Games, Engineering Master Degree, Learning while Playing, Hangman Word-Guessing, Crossword.