Game-Based Learning: Analysis of Students' Motivation, Performance, and Drop Out in a Production Engineering Course

The use of constructivist teaching dynamics gives students the opportunity to experience an environment similar to the reality the classroom. It promotes better assimilation of theoretical concepts to be applied in everyday life of future engineers. This research shows us the contribution of Game-Based Learning (GBL) for the study of the proposed topic and to reduce the evasion of the course. The GBL dynamic was applied to the discipline of Production Systems in the first phase of the course of Production Engineering at a private institution of Santa Catarina, Brazil. We used an analogical game that aimed to simulate production management, and its impacts, in pull and push production systems. A pilot experiment was performed with the game in two classes in one semester, followed by the application of the same game in another two classes the following semester.