The ongoing pandemic caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has enforced a shutdown of educative institutions of all levels, including high school and university students, and has forced educators and institutions to adapt teaching strategies in a hasty way. This work reviews the use of gamification-based teaching during the pandemic lockdown through a search in Scopus, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Semantic Scholar databases. A total of 11 papers from Chemistry, Business, Computer Science, Biology, and Medical areas have been identified and included in the present work. All of them analyzed the use of gamification strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic and assessed student’s learning and motivation outcomes. In general, students reported that gamification was innovative, engaging, and an efficient strategy to deliver curricula material; moreover, it was perceived as a fun activity. Some students reported that gamified videoconferences aided to connect with their classmates during isolation time providing effective social support. However, some students reported a bad physical or psychological condition, as consequence of the confinement, and did not get involved in the activity. Some weaknesses of the reviewed studies are the small sample size and its homogeneity, which makes it difficult to generalize their results to other scenarios and academic areas. Furthermore, although there is a feeling of learning during the activity, this result is mainly based on subjective perceptions, and any of the studies demonstrated that superior learning was achieved in comparison with traditional teaching strategies. Nevertheless, gamification can be implemented together with traditional lectures and can be a valuable instrument during post-COVID times.

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Gamification as Online Teaching Strategy During COVID-19: A Mini-Review

Context. In the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education was one of the most affected in adapting the teaching-learning process to comply with social distance measures. In this context, this research reports how we combined two active methodologies in Software Engineering Emergency Remote Teaching. Objective. Therefore, this study aims to report the experiences obtained from the application of gamified study guides in Software Engineering (SE) between November 2020 and April 2021. Method. We combined flipped classroom, an active methodology already known by them, with Gamification to improve students’ acceptance and engagement. We created six gamified study guides for the SE flipped classes. 51 students participated in the classes, 12 students from the Computer Technician course and 39 students from the Computer Science Bachelor course. Each study guide had a group of checkpoints to organize the content in levels. Results. At the end of the application, we observed 83.6% of the participating students maintained their engagement. According to self-declaration, 85% felt motivated by the approach adopted, with 75.9% considering that the class format presented enhanced their learning. We also observed a positive impact on learning gain in an average of 18.3% in their grades. Final Considerations. We concluded that using Gamification and Flipped Classroom has positive impacts on learning and acceptance, although the COVID-19 pandemic and the ERT negatively affect students’ motivation.

Gamifying Flipped Classes: An Experience Report in Software Engineering Remote Teaching

The use of Active Methodologies (AMs) in Software Engineering (SE) teaching has provoked scenarios that provide students with more meaningful learning, bringing the academy and the industry closer to stimulate transversal competencies and analytical skills through a humanistic, critical and reflective education. Despite this, the use of AMs in the SE teaching-learning process presents some obstacles, such as the low understanding by professors, the choice of the appropriate type for the teaching context, time and effort required to prepare the classes, and the absence of support tools, making implementation a challenge. In order to mitigate these difficulties, this article aims to present the development of a selection guide that provides professors with a tool to assist them in the assertive choice of the type of active methodology, based on the identifying the student’s learning profile and style. The guide has been developed through the Design Science Research methodology. Its first version was validated through a cycle of focus groups session with a panel composed of experts in the educational context of SE and in the use of AMs. The results showed indications of its usefulness, clarity, ease of use, organization, flexibility, pedagogical appropriateness, visualization and selection of AMs in different teaching contexts. In this sense, these actions can be carried out with a low level of effort by professors with few skills.

A Preliminary Guide for Assertive Selection of Active Methodologies in Software Engineering Education

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the education system, causing a shift towards online distance education. This systematic review aims to systematize research studies focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) higher education in Latin America. The search was conducted on the Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ACM Library, and Scielo databases. In total, 18 studies were selected from the fields of biology (01), chemistry (02), computer science (04), information science (02), engineering (06), systems engineering (02), and interdisciplinary (01). The results show that online learning partially followed a constructivist approach, but sometimes caused stress and depression in students. While online teaching employed gamification, and virtual laboratories, it increased professors’ workload. Universities implemented online courses, and some promoted interdisciplinary research. This review discusses the challenges and opportunities of online distance education by demonstrating the efforts made to introduce this modality of education in Latin American higher education institutions. 

The Impact of COVID-19 on Latin American STEM Higher Education: A Systematic Review

The pandemic led to an increase of online teaching tools use. One such tool, which might have helped students to stay engaged despite the distance, is gamification. However, gamification is often criticized due to a novelty effect. Yet, others state novelty is a natural part of gamification. Therefore, we investigated whether gamification novelty effect brings incremental value in comparison to other novelties in a course. We created achievement- and socialization-based gamification connected to coursework and practice test. We then measured students’ behavioral engagement and performance in a quasi-experiment. On the one hand, results show ICT students engaged and performed moderately better in a gamified condition than in control over time. On the other hand, BA course results show no difference between gamified and practice test condition and their novelty effect. We conclude an external gamification system yields better results than a classical design but does not exceed practice tests effect.

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Gamification tailored for novelty effect in distance learning during COVID-19

Distance education is understood as well-planed online learning mediated by computer technologies. Online learning involves more planning and design decisions and thus it is more rigorous than Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Given the COVID-19 pandemic several undergraduate and graduate classroom courses had to adapt their traditional classes to ERT. In this context, we have adapted our methodology based on face-to-face classes to incorporate the gamification as a strategy to deal with ERT. The goal of this paper is to present the remote methodology based on the gamification that we have applied on two Computer Science courses. To use the gamification, we have selected a free online gamification, called Classcraft, that enable us to use asynchronous tools. In our methodology, we first organized the course' contents into modules and then, for each module, we defined the activities to work the module's topics; the interactions between the professor and students; and the evaluation criteria. The results showed that the gamification as ERT strategy is effective to engage the students during the pandemic. However, they had difficulties to understand the purpose of using asynchronous tools such as forum.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3422392.3422497

Renata Faria Gomes

Papers

Gamification in Remote Teaching of SE Courses: Experience Report