GAMIFICAÇÃO DA EDUCAÇÃO E MALL: UMA PROPOSTA DE APLICAÇÃO PARA A DISCIPLINA DE IFE DOS CURSOS DE INFORMÁTICA/COMPUTAÇÃO

Abstract

Games (digital ones or not), generally used for fun, are highly motivating e are able to get the attention of players for hours, simply by being fun and challenging. In this context, the use of games to assist teaching/learning of technical and graduation disciplines, presents itself as an interesting strategy to be utilized. A discipline which falls into this profile and is very important for students of the Informatics/Computation area is English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a mobile application that can assist the teaching/learning of English taking into account the needs of professionals and students on the Informatics/Computation area. Thereby, it will be approached the concepts of Gamefication, a technique which uses concepts of games to solve problems in the real world, in a context out of the game, motivating individuals in a certain activity. It has been used in recent times, in companies and in classrooms, to engage employees or students on their activities to obtain better results. Another concept to be addressed in this paper, is MALL, which is the use of mobile technologies to assist language learning. Along with these two concepts, there will be used the characteristics of English for Specific Purposes, a discipline that focuses on the teaching/learning of English taking into account the professional and/or academic needs of the learner. On the development of the mobile application, there was used the programming languages PHP, JavaScript and Java, the markup language HTML, the style language CSS, the data base management system PostgreSQL, and the framework Cordova. Based on the fundamentals of ESP, Gamification and MALL, and by using the technologies cited above, it was possible to develop a motivating and attractive application which focuses on the development of vocabulary, and the communication skills of reading and writing of the English language, competencies necessary for professionals and students of the Informatics/Computation area.