Encouraging Student Motivation Through Gamification in Engineering Education

Abstract

At present, there is a wide variety of teaching methods and educational strategies mediated by technology: e-learning, m-learning, b-learning, gamification, flipped classroom, bring your own devices (BYOD), etc. This methodological variety creates an important student-participation space where challenges, problem solving and collaboration are put to the testing. Due to the need for communication, portability and ubiquity, several of these methods use mobile devices to achieve their goal. Laptops, smartphones and tablets, with access to wireless networks, can be used to improve teacher–student interaction and thereby stimulate students’ motivation, participation and active learning. Gamification is a teaching-learning strategy, which incorporates knowledge based on games that can support and mostly motivate the work of students and teachers. This document presents the results of a study using the Kahoot Platform, which is a web service of social and gamified education learning, in order to create evaluations changed into games of knowledge and competition among students. When it is used as a questionnaire, it challenges users to answer the questions posed, with a controlled response time, accumulated points, badges and a podium with the first five places. This leads to an active and dynamic learning due to the strong playful component, competitive and teamwork. The results of the research indicate that students improved participation and motivation in classes, besides checking that they had better results when working with mobile devices. These data will allow to analyze future perspectives about the use of the learning platform based on games as an assistance in the teaching-learning process.