Nonscientific University Students Training in General Science Using an Active-Learning Merged Pedagogy: Gamification in a Flipped Classroom

Abstract

Innovative teaching strategies are designing a new and promising landscape in education. They fill lessons with creativity and imagination for either the students or teachers. This article addresses an attempt to make the approach to science easier in a nonscientific environment: primary education at university level. Gamification methodologies were combined with a flipped classroom in order to free up in-class time and engage the students with the taught courses. A qualitative study was merged with quantitative measures of emotional and motivational parameters. These results were improved with four semistructured interviews. The results clearly showed a rise in the students' motivational levels, an acknowledgment of good teaching practices, and an evident enhancement of felt positive emotions toward science teaching and scientific issues.

Exit for success. Gamifying science and technology for university students using escape-room. A preliminary approach

“…Emotions were also analysed because of their intimate relationship with motivation, especially internal motivation ( Zamora-Polo et al., 2019a ). For the analysis of emotions (question 5), they were classified into relevant categories and their graphical representation was used for comparing both groups (Education and Engineering).…”

“…These results are consistent with emotional performance of students shown previously. Previous studies have shown that science and technology-related courses often produce negative emotions ( Novak and Wisdom, 2018 ; Sánchez-Martín et al., 2017c ) and that student-centered learning activities lead to positive emotional performance ( Jeong et al., 2018 ; Jeong et al., 2019 ; Novak and Wisdom, 2018 ; Sánchez-Martin et al., 2018 ; Suwal and Singh, 2018 ; Zamora-Polo et al., 2019a ), increasing positive emotions in students. Student responses seem to indicate that these activities are attractive, and that they consider them useful both for the development of specific skills and for the development of transversal skills.…”

“…The specific characteristics of this population usually make them think on Science and Technology as non-useful tasks. In addition, Science and Technology usually involve Mathematics, which adds rejection feelings ( Sánchez-Martin et al., 2018 ; Zamora-Polo et al., 2019a ).…”

“…Some possible techniques for creating this positive emotional environment and for improving the motivation are gamification ( Sánchez-Martín et al., 2017c ; Zamora-Polo et al., 2019a ) and Game Based Learning ( Papastergiou, 2009 ). Gamification is defined as the use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts ( Deterding et al., 2011 ), to engage people and solve problems ( De-Marcos et al., 2014 ; Warmelink et al., 2020 ; Zamora-Polo et al., 2019a ). The design of games for educational purposes is called Game Based Learning (GBL) ( Ebner and Holzinger, 2007 ; Papastergiou, 2009 ).…”

Emotional Performance of a Low-Cost Eco-Friendly PBL Methodology for Science Education. Approach in Prospective Teachers

“…First, in the introduction, the authors reflect on how teaching sciences in higher education to a non-scientific audience [10] according to the scientific method. In detail, to facilitate the future reply, a step-by-step description of the methodology is given.…”