Johan Baldeón

Geometry is a basic discipline in STEM education. Recent educational reports, however, suggest that geometry is one of the subjects that sees the lowest levels of performance in the math curriculum. This paper presents a gamified itinerary through digital activities designed to teach geometry. Our aim is to attract Primary School children into the world of geometry. First, we scaffold geometry outcomes to take students progressively from basic geometric shapes to a stronger understanding of complex three‐dimensional (3D) properties. Second, we use gamification to introduce fun into the learning process. Third, we propose digital activities in virtual environments, with which students can, in particular, develop 3D spatial perception. Concretely, children are immersed in a two‐dimensional (2D)–3D world in which they play the role of architects who manipulate 2D and 3D shapes to create buildings. Results obtained in the evaluation of the system with 60 children showed an improvement in both their learning and their interest in math. Both children and teachers rated the experience very positively.

During the last years, gamification has been used to engage students in more attractive educational activities in different Computer Science subjects at the university level, thereby improving their motivation and learning outcomes. This work continues a research that initially proposed a gamified design for the course “Distributed Artificial Intelligence”, an optional undergraduate course of the Computer Engineering degree. Specifically, we focused on reinforcing subjects related to Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) by means of fun hands-on activities to experiment theoretical concepts in practice. A first iteration of the design was deployed during two consecutive academic years, with good results in terms of students’ perceived learning, engagement and commitment during the class. Nevertheless, a posterior analysis of the design showed that the proposed mechanics did not consider some types of players - such as disruptors -, and some of the learning profiles - such as theoretical and reflexive -. Then, we proposed a card-based game to redesign the learning experience, using a LEarner-centered GAmification Design Framework (LEGA) that aligns both educational and gamification approaches. This paper focuses on this second iteration of the design, which has been deployed and evaluated during the last semester. The obtained results show that students liked the card game, were engaged and motivated during the gamified class, as well as they perceived an increased learning in the subject.