Resumen de Gamification of teaching with ClassDojo app: an experience in the Primary Education Degree
José María Romero Rodríguez, Arturo Fuentes Cabrera, Carmen Rodríguez Jiménez, Carmen Rocío Fernández Fernández
The improvement of mobile technology has made it possible to use smartphones and tablets in the classroom as an increasingly common practice. The didactic use of the mobile device is called mobile learning (Aznar, Cáceres, & Romero, 2018). In this setting, mobile learning is becoming one of the emerging methodologies to be implemented in higher education in the coming years (Adams et al., 2017). One of the main potentialities of the use of the devices is the wide range of resources that they present, including mobile applications (apps). The apps allow the learning gamification, so those elements related to the game are introduced. The acceptance of this type of resources by students is broad and the benefits associated with gamification are varied: an increase in motivation, an active participation and an improvement of marks (Melo, Arias, & Contreras, 2017; Aznar, Romero, & Marín, 2018). In this paper, it is presented the experience carried out with the ClassDojo app in two groups of students of the Degree in Primary Education of the University of Granada (n = 145), during the 2018- 2019 academic year. ClassDojo allows you to create a virtual class in which students can access and send certain tasks. In addition, families have access to see their children’s marks and development. The greatest potential lies in the establishment of a series of points associated with positive and negative behaviours. Consequently, depending on their development in the tasks or by performing basic behaviours properly can add or subtract points. The students of the Degree in Primary Education were invited to simulate a virtual class with ClassDojo, some of them entering as students and others as parents, in order to be able to visualize the interface of each user. Moreover, they established positive and negative behaviours based on general (punctuality, respect) and specific aspects of the subject (read correctly, differentiates the subject from the verb). Finally, the future teachers highlight the usefulness of the app to manage their own class in the future and the multiple possibilities that it allows as an element that motivates and keeps in touch with families.
