Keywords

1 Introduction

The main geometry concepts are indispensable for Civil Engineering students and a concern is being observed by the university teachers when it is evidenced that at pre-university and university level the students do not handle properly the concepts related to basic geometry.

The deficiencies that are evidenced among the students in the handling of this knowledge are due to that they do not understand them and/or they do not know how to apply them. For this reason, it is necessary to use different tools that allow not only to understand its application, but to evaluate the level of understanding of the basic concepts related to Euclidean geometry. To this end, it is proposed to use an online game as a classroom activity that allows the teacher to evaluate the students in the level of understanding these concepts, as use a striking visual environment.

The main difficulties that students face in studying the most relevant concepts of geometry are originated by the lack of memory to remember the formulas, the little spatial visualization and the incomprehension of the mathematical expressions since they do not deduce when and how they are applied. The structure of the document considered the theoretical foundation, the formulation of the problem and the objectives, the methodology, the data collection, the analysis and results, the conclusions and the future research and finally, the references.

2 Video Games for Educational Purposes

Video games are part of the daily life of students and although it is not very common its use as educational tools, it is undeniable that technological progress allows them to be part of the strategies available to the teachers to achieve the goals they have established in their academic work.

In order to foster the Proximal Development Zone proposed by Vygotsky (1987), the game takes on an important meaning as a didactic mean of learning as it facilitates getting out of boredom and anxiety and allows the person to immerse himself in an activity which is enjoyable for him. This condition is called Flow State, established by Csikszentmihalyi (2009), which is related to creativity, happiness and talent.

As one of the ways to play that is offered in the society is the use of video games, through them, the human being learns, assimilates, incorporates and innovates, allowing to transmit learning models to those who are beginning in life.

3 Formulation of the Problem and Objectives

A video game is defined as:

An interactive computer program for entertainment which can work on various devices such as computers or game consoles. In turn, it integrates audio and video, which allows to enjoy experiences, scenarios or situations that, in many cases, would be very difficult to live.

In the revision of the educational possibilities of video games made by Pindado (2005), he mentions the works published by Mandinacht (1987), White (1984) and Okagaki and Frensch (1994) which show that video games favor the development of various intellectual abilities, such as attention, memory, problem solving, spatial concentration and even critical thinking.

Estallo Martí (1994), emphasizes that “video game players are usually subjects of higher intellectual level than their fellow non-players.” That is, this tool can contribute so much to the emotional and intellectual development of the adolescent. The contributions made by Etxebarria (1998) are interesting because they indicate the educational possibilities that the use of video games has in relation to the school curriculum from the perspective of social learning theory, emphasizing the possibility of using this tool to treat student learning problems, since it facilitates a more effective training in aspects related to the psychomotor and deductive reasoning.

According to Koster (2004), it is fun to do these kinds of activities, since games are puzzles, where the brain is challenged to learn to analyze patterns. When a gamer (video game player) recreates himself with a video game, he does so until he masters the pattern. Video games are not only elements of entertainment, they also are tools that teach space relationships and explore or strengthen accuracy. They also have intellectual stimuli, which makes them very pleasant and satisfying. The motivation is stimulated or slowed depending on important factors that characterize it, such as the gameplay, the interface, the graphics and the type of game.

The engineer and mathematics professor, Jean-Baptiste Huynh (creator of the DragoBox work suite as appears in Siew et al. (2016)), believes that video games can be a powerful tool to support children’s learning. They learn more easily when they perceive video games as something fun, entertaining, allowing them to experiment in a logical way and strengthening concepts, such as solving mathematical equations.

Currently Edutainment type video games are considered as games that try to be educational but are characterized by having little fun for gamers. It is believed that they are not appropriate to be employed in an educational environment because they are not attractive for those who will play them, due to the lack of interest or because they do not generate the same motivation as other video games.

As it appears in Pindado (2005), Group F9 stated in its article “Eight didactic proposals” the use of this amount of entertainment video games that allow to consolidate concepts related to several school courses, some examples are PC Futbol and Lemmings for mathematical contents.

Other games used are called “Serious Games” which have as objective to use the ludic technologies for pedagogical and formative purposes, being able to be adapted to the needs of the students.

One of the advantages of using video games is that they indicate the final goal in the form of a mission to achieve, where most of the time, the protagonist is the one who has to reach it. This allows the player to feel identified with what is done in the game, increasing the motivation to implement this strategy.

Sánchez León and Aguilar Gonzales (2015), has established the creation of an Evaluative Learning Object (ELO), using a video game, which is intended to evaluate and develop skills such as memory stimulation. The results show that combining multimedia elements reinforces the knowledge and helps control concentration on the evaluation of a concept, awakening the happiness and enthusiasm of students. It also showed that the use of video games allows better capturing and sustaining student’s attention.

4 Euclid: The Game

“Euclid: The Game” (http://euclidthegame.com) is an online game inspired by the principles of Euclidean geometry, which was created by Kasper Peulen, using Java and the Geogebra package. This student of the University of Amsterdam designed this game where the students have to construct in such a way that is fun to overcome each level, using the tools that the application allows to use, strengthening the reasoning abilities in the geometry. It is an entertaining way of reinforcing the main concepts related to geometry, applying the five postulates of the elements that Euclid generated for the Euclid geometry.

The game invites the gamer to overcome 25 levels or puzzles, using several tools that allow to join points, build segments of lines or circles so as to score points. All this is to construct different geometric objects, such as equilateral triangles, parallel lines, perpendicular lines and circumferences, among others.

To reach the higher levels of this game it is only necessary to review the knowledge related to Euclidean geometry. The use of this game allows to introduce the student to the use of geometry tools, such as rule and compass, so that he can solve the problems that each level offers, applying concepts related to distances, lines, center of a circumference, etc.

As for the score that can get a player, this is granted depending on how efficient it has been in solving each puzzle. The number given by each level is related to the number of operations used to solve it. There are two types of medals, the silver medal is obtained when a level is completed satisfactorily and the gold medal which is awarded when a level is completed with a minimal amount of movement. As the levels are exceeded, it is more difficult to obtain this precious gold.

5 Objective and Methodology

The general objective of this research is to evaluate students’ academic performance when using “Euclid: The Game” as an academic activity related to the concepts of Euclidean geometry and to compare the results obtained with the traditional methodology.

This project was carried out on a sample of 49 students of Civil Engineering program with the following characteristics:

  • Ages: between 15 and 34.

  • Timetable of the alums: The main majority of the students has a daytime timetable.

  • Type of student’s school: our students are in same percentage from public and private school.

  • Year of discharge from secondary school: Much of the students ended the secondary education between 2015 and 2017.

To carry out the activity in the classroom, there were established the following phases:

  • The Phase 1 was related with the basic research work in which documentary sources of specialized literature on the state of the art on aspects related to the project are reviewed. The main aspects considered where learning and motivation, mathematics and geometry, video games and its main features and the feasibility of its use to strengthen the notions of geometry (perimeter and area).

  • The Phase 2 was based on the selection of the video game to be used in the project.

  • The Phase 3 was the first evaluation of the geometry concepts.

  • The Phase 4 was the application of the video game “Euclid: The Game” and on the collection of data required in this project.

  • The Phase 5 was an evaluation after the application of online game (traditional type) on the concepts of geometry to the population under study. It consisted on 27 exercises related to concepts of circumference, types of angles and lines comparison.

  • The Phase 6 was the analysis of the results obtained (evaluation: 0–5, game level: 1–25).

6 Results

6.1 Results of the Previous Test

The results obtained by the students in the previous evaluation appear in Table 1 and in Fig. 1.

Table 1. Results of the previous test.
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Fig. 1.
figure 1

Frequency of the of the results obtained in the previous result

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It is easy to see that although there exist some bad and low results the clear majority of the results are in a medium-high rank of note.

6.2 Results of the Final Test

The results obtained by the students in the previous evaluation can be seen in Table 2 and in Fig. 2.

Table 2. Results of the final evaluation.
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Fig. 2.
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Frequency of the of the results obtained in the final evaluation.

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It is easy to see that the results seem better since the mean is greater and the higher results are greater. Moreover, we see that the sum of the results is greater in almost 15 points.

6.3 Results of the Game Level

The results obtained by the students in the previous evaluation can be seen in Table 3 and in Fig. 3.

Table 3. Results of the game level.
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Fig. 3.
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Frequency game level raised by the alums.

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We see that the level reached by the alums is high since the level obtained by most students is greater than 12.

6.4 Correlations Between the Game Level and the Final Evaluation Result

The correlations between the game level reached and the final evaluation result can be seen in Table 4.

Table 4. Correlation data
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We obtain that that there exists a significant correlation of 0.715 between the game level reached by the students and their final evaluations result.

7 Conclusions and Future Research

The conclusions of this study are clear since we have detected that the level of the Euclid game get by the students is directly related to the results in its final evaluation. Moreover, this correlation is significant.

Related to the future research we have different branches:

  • Study the efficiency of the game by means of using a pretest-posttest evaluation.

  • Compare the results by means of using a control and experimental group.

  • Study the correlations between the initial evaluations and the level reached in the game.

  • Develop a new methodology using the game and prove it with different groups and universities.