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Virtual teaching modalities urgently implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic require strategies to motivate students to participate actively in higher education. Our study found that gamification using a reward-based system is a strategy that can improve the educational experience under exceptional circumstances. This article reports the results of two gamified undergraduate courses (Calculus and Development of Transversal Competencies) designed with a reward system. The results derived from analyses of online surveys, the final grades, and their correlations revealed that gamification helped motivate students to participate actively and improved their academic performance, in a setting where the mode of instruction was remote, synchronous, and online. From the results we conclude that gamification favours the relationship between attention, participation, and performance, while promoting the humanisation of virtual environments created during academic confinement. Implications for practice or policy: Gamification using a reward-based system promoted active class participation and improved student performance after the transition from face-to-face to virtual instruction required as a result of the global pandemic. Systemic recognition in a reward-based system improved the participants' emotional states, reducing their anxiety and the feeling of isolation caused by the pandemic, and leading to student engagement with . Gamification works as an accompaniment for students to help the increasement of teacher-student and student-student interactions.

The present study details the implementation of an improvement process for a gamification activity from a Calculus course for undergraduate students aimed to develop mathematical modeling competencies. The improvement process was studied taking into account three types of data: the results of the students' performance assessment, the meta-evaluation of the educational and proactive effects and gamification costs, and data on the level of satisfaction achieved on the educational activity. The results of 50 performance assessments were analyzed, as well as the results from the meta-evaluation process carried out by the course's teacher. The study concludes that while it is true that gamification is a strategy that introduces a high level of innovation and brings the type of motivation and emotion that encourages learning, its educational intent can be further strengthened by including performance assessment and metaevaluation processes to better understand its function and make adjustments to its design in a timely manner.

Gamification is usually understood as a pedagogical strategy that favors student engagement and motivation. Traditionally it is composed of dynamics, mechanics, and components. The purpose of this study was to compare Engineering and Economics and Social Sciences undergraduate students in their performance (grades), motivation, quality of assignments, participation, and emotion when their teachers used gamification as an innovative teaching method during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pearson correlations, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Mann–Whitney test were conducted. Additionally, four students were interviewed to describe the emotional downside of the lockdown. The main results indicate that there are higher positive relationships among variables in the Engineering undergraduate students rather than in Economics and Social Sciences and show that emotion poorly correlates with performance, especially for the Economics and Social Sciences students, as many have a negative attitude toward learning mathematics. Additionally, gender and scholarship status are not differential factors. Gamification proved to be a useful pedagogical strategy to promote participation and enhance motivation among undergraduate students, particularly in a context of academic confinement. This study gives teachers an idea of the benefits and extent to which gamification can be used in the classroom.

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Open access education has significantly grown in strength as a new way of fostering innovation in schools. Such is the case of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which have the added benefit of encouraging the democratisation of learning. In this sense, the Bi-National Laboratory on Smart Sustainable Energy Management and Technology Training between Mexico and the United States of America was launched with the purpose of trying MOOC technology and measuring its impact on the academic, business, and social sectors. Under this scenario, this study aimed to show the relationship between using gamification and level of performance in a MOOC on energy topics. The methodology was quantitative, using the course analytical data for socio-demographic information and predictive models. A total of 6246 participants enrolled in the MOOC and 1060 finished it. The results showed that participants aged between 20 and 50 had the highest completion rates in the gamified challenge; the higher academic degree, the more inclined participants were to solve the gamified challenge; and no such distinction exists by gender. Implications for practice or policy:• xMOOC participants' educational level determines the successful completion of challengebased gamification. • Challenge-based gamification is a useful strategy for xMOOC students' evaluation.• It is important to focus on the challenges design, if the planned challenges are not up to the students' skills, the learning results could be detrimental. • Gamification in xMOOCs promotes participants' engagement regardless of age, gender, or educational level.