Maruxaina: The Sea Nymph Who Will Be Judged

Introduction

The students of social sciences and especially in economics and business studies show great motivation in subjects with content on business strategy and fundamentals of economics. However, quantitative subjects generate great concern and fear in these students. In addition, as it is an online university in the first class of statistics, we asked students the feelings they have about this subject with one word, and 80% answered: “worried”. Also, we have realized in more than four years of teaching statistics that students need to be guided and motivated in each class. Besides, it's easier for us (professors) to follow the acquisition of knowledge if we continuously monitored the acquisition of the contents throughout the whole course.

For this reason, this 2021-2022 academic year we have introduced gamified resources as a methodology to improve the skills education process. In the previous course, competitive quizzes have been introduced through online tests in live sessions as a pilot test. These quizzes have generated very positive results among the students. Paniagua and Istance (2018) has identified gamification as a method of innovation that can be introduced in various sectors, among which we highlight education. Therefore, with this process, we intend to motivate students with a dynamic resource that helps them review theoretical concepts. For the correct use and resolution of the gamification, we will use different software resources, such as Genially (2022), Google Forms (2022) all of them have free access, although premium accounts are required for some specific details.

The strategy of gamification proposed is focused on the review sessions planned on the subject of Statistics in three degrees: Marketing, Finance and Accounting, and Business at the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja. We have a two-phase implementation schedule program. The first phase is designed synchronously to facilitate the monitoring of the students' evolution and increase motivation. Then, we open the possibility of an asynchronous way posted on the forum of Statistics. The asynchronous path was done with a previous breakout, but only a few students have done it. The limited success of this previous breakout was due to the fact that the whole exercise was proposed the week previous to the exam. This escape room takes up what was learned in the previous pilot and improves the presentation, missions, and implementation of it.

The main objective is to see if the online escape room has a direct impact on greater motivation, less fear, and, therefore, greater acquisition of concepts and practical development of the subject. For this purpose, a popular legend is used as the main story through which four missions have been structured to match with the review sessions of the subject. The story is about a sea nymph living on the coast of northwestern Spain, in a town of sailors. The population is divided between whether the nymph is kind, warning the sailors of rough seas and therefore alerting them, or mean, causing them to be shipwrecked. Therefore, the population needs a neutral soul that drinks the concoction to be able to judge and solve the problem. The student will have to sentence the nymph by drinking a concoction that it will be prepared with the rewards (ingredients) of each mission.

To evaluate the escape room, we will be used different KPIs. The first one will be to compare the grades of students from the previous year in the same subject in the same degree. The second indicator will be obtained by using the statistics of visualization of each breakout compared to the students that took the exam. Finally, the third indicator will be collected with a survey, asking students their feedback on satisfaction and improvements. Different strategies have been developed depending on the degree we are introducing the escape room. The results do not show relevant differences in the two strategies, but it can be affirmed that the students have used it as a revision resource. In the first strategy, the students have been presented with the resource in May, while in the second it has been presented in June. However, the high point of the escape room query was in the last week of June, coinciding with the week before the exam. The main results of the escape room show a high success among students.