Gamificación como estrategia didáctica para el fortalecimiento del aprendizaje cooperativo en el proceso de enseñanza de estudios sociales

Abstract

The present research work was carried out in the private educational unit "Siete de Mayo", located in the city of Machala, with the participation of the teacher of Social Studies, Lcdo. Lucia Tocto, and with the support of the students of the seventh year of EGB parallel "A". In recent times, video games have taken on a significant role in everyone's daily lives, particularly those of students and teachers, because they transform traditional tasks into playful activities that necessitate the use of new technologies. For that purpose, it is intended that teachers learn new skills while applying didactic strategies and innovative techniques that allow them to be used effectively in their classes using different gamified technological tools for good communication and interaction between teachers and students. Working with this strategy makes it easier for students to socialize and support one another because their opinions are considered, resulting in the development of skills and competencies in the students who reinforce their educational and social experiences. This new society requires well-trained and motivated teachers to deal with the different changes that schools are constantly going through in the new social reality. Teachers should utilize technology to support the teaching-learning process. The main objective of this research is to develop an educational game as a didactic strategy that allows students to strengthen cooperative learning in their seventh graders to motivate them in the Social Studies area through gamification. To do this, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used by applying different research methods such as descriptive, inductive, deductive, applied, experimental, and documentary methods such as interviews and surveys to a defined population of 22 seventh graders of General-Basic-Education and the teacher. Nevertheless, for the development of the prototype, the ADDIE methodology was used because it has the purpose of planning, creating, and using efficient and effective teaching-learning environments for technology-based education. Thus, this has allowed to satisfactorily meet the expectations necessary for the adequate applicability of the prototype. According to the analysis and based on the design requirements, it was possible to know that the implemented proposal obtained effective results for the application of the prototype. It is worth mentioning that the students have at their disposal the technological resources necessary for the correct implementation of the prototype. So that, they also have prior knowledge of games for the various activities. For this reason, no inconveniences were found on the part of the students to access and manipulate the GALY educational game and perform the activities within it to achieve the proposed objectives of the research. In short, the research presented favorable results that show the effectiveness and appreciation of the educational game for both Social Studies’ teacher and seventh graders students. They demonstrated interest and desire to use more gamified applications in their future classes. In addition, recommendations were identified that helped improve the GALY educational resource. It is essential to use free programs that present feasible functionalities. It is also crucial to offer and use simple interfaces. Finally, it is recommended to use the GDevelop 5 APP that has favorable updates as it helps build your game. It is free, fast, open source, and so easy to use that you will never see the games in the same way since it is flexible and educational. In this way, events, places, content, and characters embodied in the Seventh Year Practical Guide were included in the resource, so that they were recreated in a dynamic and interactive way that facilitated the creation of the prototype.