Abstract

MORERA-HUERTAS, Jessica  and  MORA-ROMAN, Juan José. Use of Gamification in Fundamentals of Biology Course. Educare [online]. 2019, vol.23, n.2, pp.188-200. ISSN 1409-4258.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15359/ree.23-2.10.

Currently, at the Instituto Parauniversitario Plerus, there are limitations on the part of students such as studying at the last minute, not using reference tools such as textbooks or articles, and studying for a grade and not for the knowledge itself. Therefore, the objective of this research was to reinforce the course contents, the continuous study, and the self-evaluation of the acquired knowledge through the development of gammification tasks to favor the learning of the students of this course. For the development of the didactic strategy, 29 students from Fundamentals of Biology course, at the Instituto Parauniversitario Plerus, took part: 24 of whom completed the course and five withdrew it. For this group, a portfolio and reinforcement activities (plasticine models, homemade experiments, word search puzzles, crossword puzzles, among others) were established. The realization of these activities provided rewards through the gift of stickers to each student. These rewards were collected and exchanged for didactic prizes, such as a percentage in a short exam. A game called Biology cr was also developed in the Reinos® mobile application. In it, each student developed unique selection questions that were reviewed by the teacher and then incorporated to be answered by other classmates. To determine the results, the grades obtained by the students enrolled in the Fundamentals of Biology course were reviewed, and a survey was carried out, which each student completed once the implementation of this strategy was concluded. To analyse the data, a sociodemographic analysis was carried out for age and sex, and a descriptive analysis with frequency distribution was carried out for the rest of the questions. From a teaching perspective, good results were obtained, with 66.7% of the student body passing. With regard to the student perspective, there were positive aspects (improvement in the understanding of subjects, obligation to constantly take up the subjects studied in class and understand them on their own, including personal research, if necessary) and negative aspects (academic load increase, preference for the use of traditional didactic strategies and lack of delimitation of the most relevant aspects of each of the subjects), which must be considered for future experiences.

Keywords : Gamification; game; collaboration; significant learning.

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