This article delves into the success stories of different gamification applications within the Industrial and Systems Engineering academic program at Tecnologico de Monterrey. The primary goal is to enhance three critical variables in the design of an educational activity: Learning, Skill Development, and Engagement. The latter, in particular, is of utmost importance, as it is a key determinant of the effectiveness of the learning process.

The pandemic in 2019 precipitated an educational revolution, compelling the adoption of various emerging technologies for distance learning. Before this event, educators constantly fought for students' attention against electronic devices. This struggle often led to a lack of engagement, hindering skills development and learning of sensitive topics. The pandemic, however, necessitated a shift, leading to the exploration of innovative solutions like gamification.

In engineering, it is common for some concepts and terms to become complex and require attention from the students. When part of the sequence is lost, the student feels lost and becomes distracted by not finding meaning in the teacher's explanation. This causes the student to seek alternative learning in other media at the end of the class and ask the teacher for advice, but above all, the student acquires a feeling of discomfort regarding the educational model and the teacher's teaching method.

The confinement period was an opportunity to improve learning methods and incorporate gamification for transversal and complex disciplinary competencies. For this, analog devices were used as a learning component to design board games, and emerging technologies were used to construct simulators and games based on XR, which allows students to have fun in distance learning.

During this teaching journey, we found that the critical element was based on the teacher's creativity when designing the learning activity based on gamification. Having the best simulators and online games does not guarantee the success of the class since this is based on the teacher's ability to obtain and maximize learning through the different stages of the session, which this research team has called the wow experience and is defined as an equation as follows:

Wow experience = (Activity + Creativity + Gamification) ^Emerg technologies

In this article, we share the design methodologies of academic activities, the development and construction of online simulators and gamification, their application in class, and the stories of success and failure that allowed us to refine the developments and lessons until we maximized our variable learning objectives.

Keywords: Higher Education, Educational Innovation, Gamification, XR.