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

This work aims to analyze the factors that lead to dropout rate in the Computer Science Bachelor degree from the University of Brasilia and identify the students’ profiles that are at risk of dropping. Personal and transcript data are used. Dropout rate is a global problem in universities. The number of students enrolled in a course or institution that leave without graduating generates losses in different areas. Over the Computer Science Bachelor degree, the dropout rate is higher than 50 %. Aiming to determine the causes of the problem to reduce this value, statistical analysis is performed to identify the main factors related to the profile of an dropout student to then apply data mining techniques to check what factors have the greatest impact and the profile of the students who are currently attending. Different classifiers were developed to meet the highest performing to the analyzed data. The results show that the dropout rate problem is getting worse in the course.

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Evasão no bacharelado em Ciência da Computação da Universidade de Brasília : análise e mineração de dados

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

O mercado de trabalho de Informatica em qualquer local do pais e fora dele, esta muito carente de mao de obra especializada. O crescente avanco na area de Computacao, faz com que a cada dia aumente as ofertas de emprego para mao de obra especializada em Tecnologia da Informacao. Se por um lado a oferta de empregos so aumenta, porque pelo lado educacional a procura so diminui e a evasao dos que ingressao so aumenta. Nos ultimos anos tivemos uma grande evasao nos cursos de Informatica de Curitiba-PR e regiao metropolitana, e quase sempre se acredita que esteja atrelado a fatores internos a instituicao. No entanto, a questao que fica e se realmente sao somente fatores internos que levaram a desistencia, pois o problema da evasao e de todos os cursos da area de Computacao. Neste trabalho buscamos identificar o cenario no ensino superior de informatica e os principais motivos da evasao. Este trabalho busca os fatores que geram a evasao nos cursos de Comutacao. A coleta de dados foi por um questionario abordando temas sobre o curso, o conhecimento por parte dos entrevistados no que tange a area de Computacao e conhecimento previos sobre matematica, a logica e interesse na programacao de computadores. Este questionario foi aplicado a alunos que estao em curso, alunos evadidos e egressos dos cursos de Computacao de Curitiba e regiao metropolitana. Os questionarios foram aplicados via Internet, sem a identificacao dos entrevistados. A busca pelos resultados se dara pela tabulacao dos resultados de perguntas objetivas, levantamento das respostas dissertativas e pelo cruzamento destas respostas entre si. Da mesma forma, buscar-se a cruzar a percepcao dos remanescentes quanto aos motivos da evasao de seus colegas. Algumas analises preliminares apontaram diferencas de perfil e percepcao entre os cursos. Para os alunos de Ciencias da Computacao as materias que mais desestimulam o estudo estao relacionadas a Analise de Sistemas, 63%. Ja para os alunos de Sistemas de Informacao, apenas 25% apontou este fator como desestimulante. Para os alunos de Sistemas de Informacao o que mais desestimula sao materia relacionadas a area de Humanas, 58%. O que chamou a atencao para o curso de Ciencias da Computacao, que tem o seu estudo focado o desenvolvimento de softwares, 71% apontou como desestimulante as materias relacionadas a Matematica, e 41% apontou as materias de Programacao, que sao a base do curso. O estudo indica que um dos motivos da evasao e o nao conhecimento previo dos objetivos do curso escolhido por parte do aluno.

https://portaldeperiodicos.unibrasil.com.br/index.php/anaisevinci/article/download/1081/1022

A evasão nos cursos de graduação em computação de curitiba

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

Gamification in Remote Teaching of SE Courses: Experience Report

A evasão tornou-se um problema recorrente nos cursos de graduação no Brasil e isso é ainda mais grave nos cursos da área de Ciência da Computação, nos quais o índice de alunos que se formam é baixo (aproximadamente 9,4%). Objetivando identificar as causas da evasão no curso de graduação em Computação da Universidade Federal do Ceará, um survey, aplicado por meio de um questionário online, foi conduzido no ano de 2020. O survey obteve respostas de 105 participantes, distribuídos entre os perfis de alunos atuais e desistentes. A partir da análise dos dados coletados do survey, observou-se que as principais dificuldades enfrentadas estão relacionadas ao curso (grade curricular, didática dos professores, etc) e motivações pessoais.

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Evasão em Computação na UFC sob a perspectiva dos alunos

Educational games can provide players with rich learning and socializing experiences through different interac-tion paradigms, such as board games, card games, and, more recently, hybrid (physical-digital) games. However, the process of making, maintaining, and evolving an educational analog game is not a trivial task. Balancing the game mechanics and dynamics to provide a pleasant and educational gaming experience can be very difficult to achieve. Furthermore, adding a digital component in the gameplay can disturb the experience of the game and learning ob-jectives, and this kind of insertion should be evaluated. This work then aims to report the process of developing and evaluating a mobile application for helping the gameplay of a card game that focuses on on teaching software testing concepts. Our primary concern during the development of the application was whether its insertion would compromise the learning process or the social experience of the card game. The developed application has the fol-lowing functionalities: point counter, dice scrolling, timer, and a summary of the rules. We designed and developed a first version of the application. Then, we evaluated the impact of its insertion on gameplay by applying the game assisted with the application with students from Computer Science and Computer Engineering courses and, after the end of the game, the participants answered questionnaires about the players’ experience and their impressions about the application. Based on the results, we perceived that the use of the application provided benefits to the players’ experience, although the evaluation highlighted some opportunities for improvement. Thus, we evolve the mobile application based on the comments gathered in this evaluation. This new version has improvements on user’s interface, aiming to provide a better user experience, and new functionalities. Furthermore, we assessed the second version and compared both versions of the mobile app in order to collect evidence regarding improvements in the game experience.

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Rubens A. S. Silva

Papers

Gamification in Remote Teaching of SE Courses: Experience Report

Evasão em Computação na UFC sob a perspectiva dos alunos

Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Application for an Educational Card Game