Abstract:

During their university years the motivation of the undergraduates fluctuates, commonly decreasing the strength and the motivation of the newcomers in their following years. The students’ motivation is a highly important issues, even if the academics are also mainly concern about the level of the student’s learning and their transversal skill because all these points are correlated. Indeed, these could be considered as three basic pillars for a successful teaching on higher education. Considering this, introducing active methodologies in several subjects capable to improve at the same time these three pillars could be a highly interesting and efficient way to improve students’ learning results.

In this work, an active methodology based on a gamification approach has been tested on three different optative subjects of the Physical Chemistry department. These subjects are all taught at Chemistry Bachelor degree, being Environmental Chemistry teach at the third course, while Colloid and Interfaces and Polymer Chemistry are taught at fourth course. The gamification methodology employed for all the subjects was focused on several class activities devoted to the development and fabrication of the classical board game “Trivial Pursuit”. Each activity was designed not only to improve students’ motivation and activity, but also the learning of the theoretical contents and enhancing several transversal skills such as self-evaluation or teamwork, among other.

Keywords:

Gamification, transversal skill, trivial pursuit, Physical Chemistry.