Just a game? Gamifying a general science class at university

Gamification is a modern technique in science education that involves the participation of the student as a gamer in a playful structure. As a result of this activity, the student should be motivated for learning the specific academic content, becoming a player rather than a spectator in an increasing creativity environment. This work presents a gamification experience within prospective primary teachers in a General Science Classroom. A scoring game-based methodology was used for teaching Matter and Energy contents. In an effort for promoting collaborative dynamics rather than competitive ones in the entire group, a new variable was introduced once the game was started. It was called Game-Index and took into account the scoring of the whole class, similarly to H-Index. The results evidenced the need for these correcting measures in the gamifications processes, since a positive correlation amongst scoring and academic marks was confirmed, but also some kind of competitive-by segreggation inside the class group.