The students' lack of motivation is a usual problem. The students value more the obtention of the degree than the developing of competences and skills. In order to fight this, we developed a gamification's experience based on merits and leaderboards. The merits are linked to the attainment of skills and competences that students usually do not appreciate. During the year 2016, we are carrying out a pilot involving 950 students at the Graduate of Engineering in Computer Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). | Journal of Technology and Science Education JOTSE, 2017 – 7(2): 150-161 – Online ISSN: 2013-6374 – Print ISSN: 2014-5349 A GAMIFICATION EXPERIENCE TO IMPROVE ENGINEERING STUDENTS' PERFORMANCE THROUGH MOTIVATION Adrián Sánchez-Carmona , Sergi Robles , Jordi Pons Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) (Spain) , , Received October 2016 Accepted March 2017 Abstract The students' lack of motivation is a usual problem. The students value more the obtention of the degree than the developing of competences and skills. In order to fight this, we developed a gamification's experience based on merits and leaderboards. The merits are linked to the attainment of skills and competences that students usually do not appreciate. During the year 2016, we are carrying out a pilot involving 950 students at the Graduate of Engineering in Computer Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Keywords – Gamification, Merits, Leaderboards, Skills, Competences evaluation. ---------- -150- Journal of Technology and Science Education – 1. Introduction Engineering Professors face a problem increasingly widespread: even when the 76% of the students consider they feel interest or vocation for their studies, many of them do not seem to be sufficiently motivated (López, Alarcón, Rodríguez & Casado, 2014). This situation is accentuated in abstract subjects like algebra or calculus, because the students considered them to be uninteresting or even useless for their training. But the lack of motivation is not related only to the contents (Lee & Hammer, 2011), the goal of many students is to get a degree that allows them to enter the labor market (Smith-Robbins, 2011). For this reason, they do not adequately value the assimilation of knowledge, or the development of skills and competencies that they will need to develop their work. This situation .
