A.M. López, F. Benedicto, G. Azuara, P. Garrido, N. Gómez, R. Igual-Catalan, R. Lacuesta, A. Navas-Montilla, C. Prieto
The University Orientation Plan of the Polytechnic University School of Teruel (EUPT) of the University of Zaragoza, has the aim to promote the integration, education and development of students at the University, as well as their integration into the world of work. It integrates all the support and guidance services and activities that the University makes available to students. One of the most important tools of this program is the tutor-mentor team that in each Faculty and School provides students with all the information of interest related to their degree studies and advises them when they have any problems or doubts about the academic procedures. Formed by students (mentors) and teachers (tutors) this team is also responsible for guiding students to the appropriate sources of information in each case.
In a previous project the gamification methodology was followed, to create a set of activities that help the students to discover by themselves how to use these support and guidance resources and gain independence and digital competence. The aim was to solve one of the problems detected by the tutors and mentors. Students were not able to use the support materials when they needed them. The information provided by the orientation team (or the way this information was provided) seemed to be useless.
During the last academic year this set of digital games has been analysed and assessed by their authors and by the students for whom they have been designed.
The authors have carried out a deeper analysis of tools to support the design and implementation of digital contents to be used in gamification activities following three main goals:
- Sustainability: the resources must be easily updated when the information changes what is normal because it is related to normative.
- Transferability: the digital materials can be adapted to other faculties in the context of the University of Zaragoza, just changing the aspects specifics of each of the offered degrees.
- Diffusion: the resources should be available to a great number of students.
Only if the creation and maintenance of these resources is simple it can be possible to keep their quality. As a consequence, web platforms as Wooclap and Genially has been selected to develop the definitive digital resources. These tools include gamification templates and artificial intelligence support that help to obtain professional results with little effort. However, at the same time, a student has developed an own web gamification tool using modern web technologies. This opens the possibility of not being dependent on commercial solutions.
The activities have been used by the students in the EUPT’s welcome day and in other meetings related to the orientation programme. All the games are available in the EUPT web page. An evaluation survey is included at the end of each activity to collect information from the students. This information has been analysed. One of the main conclusion is that, as expected, students discover in this way information that they had already received by their tutors and mentors but that they had not assimilated because they had not directly used it.
Keywords: Orientation programme, gamification, web tools.