Non-Scientific University Students Training in 2 General Science Using an Active-Learning Merged 3 Pedagogy: Gamification in a Flipped Classroom 4

: Innovative teaching strategies are designing a new and promising landscape in 18 education. They fill up the lessons with creativity and imagination either for the students and teachers. This article addresses an attempt to make easier the approach to science in a non-scientific 20 environment: primary education at university level. Gamification methodologies were combined 21 with flipped classroom in order to free up in-class time and engage the students with the taught 22 courses. A qualitative study was merged with quantitative measures of emotional and 23 motivational parameters. These results were improved with four semi-structured interviews. The 24 results clearly showed a raise in the students' motivational level, an acknowledgment of good teaching practice and an evident enhancement of felt positive emotions toward science teaching 26 and scientific issues. F.Z.-P., L.E.-A.; F.Z.-P. and J.S.-M..;


30
The need for an integral education in and outside the school is a clear claim nowadays. In this 31 context, academic aspects and others such as civic education for a responsible citizenship should be 32 considered [1][2][3][4][5]. Educators (at any level) should take education into account as a 33 whole-comprehensive process, where the individual courses such as mathematics, literature or 34 plastic arts should be no longer seen as unlinked containers, but pieces of a single puzzle. In this 1. When flipping a course, as a teacher you do not simply ask the students to read and study 115 alone, at home, some materials. You select the most appropriate materials for understanding 116 the contents; sometimes even you generate them (video tutorials, podcasts, documents, etc.).

117
This requires you to choose attractive formats for the students. E.g., it has no sense asking them 118 to watch a 45-minutes video when some studies have proposed that novelty disappear within 119 10 minutes [23,24]. 120 2. If you achieve the students catch the dynamic of preparing the classes before the lesson, you can 121 ask them to make their doubts and problems with the content prior the face to face session, so it 122 allows you to make a just-in-time teaching [25]. This means adapting the exact teaching process 123 and strategy to the current needs of the students.

Teaching and learning science for non-scientific audience: a current challenge
If teaching in a more efficient way is, in general, a challenge for educators, making it when 141 dealing with some specific issues can be even harder. This is the case of science, technology, 142 engineering and mathematics subjects, namely STEM issues. It is commonly accepted that STEM 143 subjects usually make negative or disgusting emotions to arise in those individuals that have 144 experienced difficult in their learning [26] and this is worrying because that evidences that a bad 145 emotional experience, in a high percentage, connects with a general rejection of science issues . The 146 case of primary teachers is even more relevant because their negative experiences can be shifted to 147 their students, children that probably will receive the same negative messages about science and 148 science education [27]. This creates a vicious circle ( Figure 2). The student had a bad experience with 149 the subjects STEM in primary or secondary school, (s)he faced negatively at the University. Finally, 150 (s)he transmits this experience to his students. Therefore, the circle is closed. The current trends in science education are aware of such importance of emotions, because 154 there is no way of engaging students without taking their emotional performance into account, 155 understood as the emotional response, positive or negative, experienced by a student when facing a 156 particular course [28,29]. If this is relevant for teaching and learning whatever subject, it can be 157 considered as a crucial aspect when teaching science, because usually science teachers begin from usually feel good when dealing with initial science issues (one just have to remember how (s)he felt 162 when the teacher brought a plastic yoghurt glass filled up with cotton and a bean seed), but this 163 feeling rapidly disappear once the years go ahead [31]. Gamification and flipped classroom are 164 teaching methodologies that look for recovering this initial surprise and good feeling amongst 165 university non-scientific students.

166
In the last few years, the use of gamification and flipped classroom is increasing substantially at 167 different stages of education, however, the combination of the two has been least explored to date.

168
The main objective of this research is to analyse the combined use of gamma and inverted class in

172
This research has been carried out by merging several methodologies. Some of them are 173 quantitative, measuring through surveys the students' motivation level. In order to obtain more 174 information, a qualitative study based on the interview of selected students has been developed. recorded, and to use their answers for our research with academic purposes. In order to maintain 177 anonymity, all names used in the article purely fictitious.

186
The general profile of the standard student of this course deserves a specific description, based 187 not only on quantitative data, but also and above all on personal and direct observation:

215
 Finally, a game-based activity was implemented for generating good feelings.

216
As can be appreciated, the students get into the lessons with a high level of participation. The 217 oral exposition was constricted to a minimum time within the 90 minutes the classes took. This was 218 made in order to engage the students to attend the classes, as the attendance is not mandatory at 219 university.

220
Some game-based activities for playing inside the classroom were the following ones:   233 5. Scientific coffee: Students were received at classroom with a free coffee and a paper napkin in 234 their sites. Then, a very difficult problem with its corresponding solution was given, one 235 different to each student. The purpose of this scientific coffee is to provoke a scientific talk (each 236 student must explain his or her problem to the classmate sitting next) inside a relatively 237 non-formal situation. The explanation, therefore, must be written down on the napkin.

238
6. Collaborative problems Jig-Saw: Several proposals of puzzles were given during the course.

239
The entire problem was segmented into four or five parts that must be put together for facing 240 the problem. Each part was given to a different student's team, so their collaboration was 241 absolutely needed for the success of the whole group. An example of such activity is given in 242 Figure 3.

270
These surveys can be summarized into the following categories: 271 1. General surveys on participation level, regarding the flipped classroom activities. These were 272 simply questionnaires that must be filled out prior to the face to face lesson. In them, teacher 273 asked the students about doubts and feelings on the course they were working on then. An 274 example of this kind of survey is given in Table 1. These last ones were considered as qualitative aspects (section 3.2). In order to improve the study, quantitative research was complemented with qualitative one.

289
This consisted on semi-structured interviews to four selected students. The selection was made 290 considering the combination of two variables: initial motivation toward science subjects and initial 291 basic scientific knowledge, so the four students presented the total feasible combinations as Table 2 292 presents.    Although students did not experience the subject or the exam as easy, they were asked about 327 the teaching method afterwards (that is, once the subject and the exam is over). The responses were 328 again high enough for considering them as positive (average of 7.3). In order to compare the two 329 assessments (teaching method and course difficulty) Figure 6 was built up. In it, the response 330 frequency to both questions is showed, although the axes are inverted to make the comparison 331 easier. As it clearly depicts, students responded with a high similarity to both questions and high 332 rates are reached in them. There are only a couple of responses out of the 7-10 range. This means the 333 students considered the teaching method as a good choice for science education, although we cannot 334 distinguish whether they also consider these strategies advisable for prospective teachers.

356
Regarding the second question (How will you remember these classes?), the positive aspects of 357 the teaching method were pointed out in a general way. Textually, students responded like the 358 following: 359 `I will remember these classes as the best in the degree because of the methodology, but also as some of

363
In general, the way the students expressed their ideas about the perception of the subject shows 364 that innovative methodologies improve the emotional performance in the students, since it does not 365 remove the difficulty, they detect in the science issues, but makes it more acceptable.

377
The total count on emotional references according to the different interviews is presented in 378 Figure 8. Clearly, positive emotions are more frequent than negative ones (Figure 9). This is consistent with previously published work in the literature,

389
In Figure 8 is shown categorized by students. A clear trend in the data cannot be observed. The 390 student who used more emotional expressions correspond with a student with a high initial 391 motivation and a low initial science knowledge (Ana); in the second place, a student with low initial 392 motivation and a high initial science knowledge (Roberto). On the other hand, the student who used 393 less emotional expressions is Blanca, a student who had initially a high motivation and science 394 knowledge. These results seem to indicate that emotional outcomes depend more on the 395 teaching-learning process than on the preconditions of the students.
396 Figure 10 shows the frequency account of different emotions. As can be seen from the graph, the 397 three more positive emotions cited by students are motivation (22 times, 28%), pleasure (12 times, 398 14.6%) and excitement (6 times, 7.3%); on the other hand the three more negative emotions cited by students are fear (4 times, 5%), confusion (4 times, 5%) and anxiety (3 times, 3.7%). As can be seen, 400 the generated emotions are clearly positive; the number of times that motivation appears is more 401 than 5 times greater than fear or confusion. This fact clearly confirms the hypothesis 1, the 402 methodology used enhance the students' emotional performance. These results are consistent with 403 other studies than relate innovative methods with an increase in students' motivation [22,41].