Abstract
Abstract. Gamification is a rather new method in education and unfortunately is not a widely known method among Hungarian primary school teachers in Romania. This paper presents the knowledge and opinion of pre-service preschool and primary school teachers about gamification and its use in education. In this study 81 Primary and Preschool Pedagogy students from BabeșBolyai University were participated, 80 of them were female and 1 male. 40 students are in first year and 41 in second year of their studies. The research was carried out during February-March 2020 at Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania. To get to know their point of view and knowledge about gamification, an online questionnaire was developed by the authors. The obtained data was quantitatively (closed questions) and qualitatively (open questions) analyzed. According to the results, half of the students think that there is no difference between gamification and game-based learning and for three quarter it is difficult to see the differences. This is surprising as students were taught about gamification before filling in the questionnaire. Students perceive a high level of utility of gamification in education. The most frequently mentioned benefits by the participants are that gamification motivates and actively involves students. Even if participants gave many advantages of integrating gamification in education, the biggest disadvantage is related with the time necessary for preparation of a gamified lesson and for the time-allocation during the lesson. As obstacles of using gamification, they mentioned the negative attitude or/and lack of methodological knowledge of some teachers and the constrains of the curriculum. Most of the preservice teachers prefer both paper-pencil based and technology-aid gamification. They consider solving exercises the most suitable for gamification.
Highlights
As the research presented in this paper focuses on pre-service preschool and primary school teachers, the literature was studied about the use of gamification in these group ages
First year students had a short presentation about gamification, second year students have experienced gamification in two games designed in Seppo
To find out what students know about gamification, they were asked to formulate what they understand by gamification
Summary
We live in a world of constant change, where we must constantly adapt to challenges if we want to keep pace with development. The foundation and development of these ability systems and key competencies is the task of the current education, it is essential to open to the new in the field of education as well. Traditional teaching methods tend to have a fixed learning structure that in some way prevents the child's motivation, creativity, and innovative skills from developing. Students receive theoretical rather than practical instruction, which encourages them for memorizing knowledge instead of developing competencies. Gamification can be one such new opportunity for innovation. The use of this method has many benefits, but without a strong methodological knowledge about the integration of this method in the classroom it could have negative effects.
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