Gamification in engineering education: A pedagogical perspective

The implementation of game structure components into genuine circumstances not ordinarily connected with games is what is usually labelled as Gamification. Born in the economical world in order to change customers’ behaviour and making the products more appealing, Gamification is rapidly growing in the realm of instruction. Both areas overlap in many respects (motivation, assessing and certifying levels, feedback, practice…) and this made the transfer from one field to the other easier. In engineering studies, which is the context of this research, Gamification is quite a spread out pedagogical model. Nevertheless, Gamification depends on many variables and failure is not an unusual aspect of this methodological implementation. Sometimes considered a tautological autonomous didactic strategy, it is applied with little awareness of its pedagogical implications. Specific aim of this paper is to highlight the existing correlation between gamified features and the correspondent pedagogical evidencebased research or theories in order to prospect new scenarios for teaching processes in higher education.