The use of Video Games and Gamification as innovative teaching material for learning Social Sciences in Higher Education

The purpose of the following research is to analyze to what extent the video games and the gamification tools -Quizizz and Socrative- developed are learning strategies that facilitate the educational process, promoting the performance, participation, and motivation of students in university studies. The proposed objective is to analyse the effectiveness of the application of video games and gamification to improve the knowledge and skills of students in the subject of Social Sciences and its Didactics. Using a quantitative methodology with a quasi-experimental design, a survey was carried out with a sample composed of 116 participants who are studying the Degree in Primary Education at a private Spanish university. For the data analysis, the GraphPad Prism 5 program has been used and the arithmetic mean is shown with the standard deviation of the values collected before and after the use of the tools mentioned above. The students positively valued the inclusion of this type of gamification strategies in the subject, so it can be considered that the application of gamification and video games favors the development of an initial training of future Primary Education teachers more adapted to the current reality.