Engaging Future Engineers: The Case Study of a Serious Game Implementation

Society is continually evolving and the needs of current generations of students are changing, deriving from the ongoing digital evolution of the whole of society. Gamification tools are increasingly being implemented in education, since previous studies have demonstrated their usefulness to foster motivation, particularly in the case of engineering students. For that reason, there is a great need to continue providing empirical evidence of experiences proving the positive consequences of new active learning tools. In this work, a video-game (which would be catalogued as a serious game in the literature) was implemented in a subject traditionally perceived by the students as very complex, at the School of Engineering in Cádiz (Spain). The purpose of the video-game was to provide an entertaining way to review the theoretical concepts taught during the lessons. Since the video-game was successful, another one was developed with the same environment but the theoretical contents of another part of the subject. After implementing the first game, which was played by N = 311 students, 94% of them stated that the game increased their motivation in the subject, and also that the games were very easy to use, very helpful to review the subject and enjoyable. Also, the students who played the games obtained a higher performance compared to the rest (around + 36% higher passing rates). Last of all, a t-student analysis revealed that the mean differences between the exam scores obtained by students who played the games and the exam scores of those who did not play were significant for both games. The impact of gender was also investigated, showing that gender had a small influence on the rating given to the games.