A trilha da vacina: o uso da gamificação como abordagem estratégica para a construção do conhecimento em imunologia no ensino médio

Abstract

Immunology is a sub-area of biology and medicine that studies the functioning of the immune system and its study can be considered a public health strategy, seeing that by means of it's possible to contextualize several issues related to the well-being of the individual and society, such as is the case of vaccination. In this sense, this work aimed to evaluate the use of the game "A Trilha da Vacina" as an auxiliary tool in the application of an educational activity on Immunology and Vaccines for students of a high school. The research was carried out with a 3rd year class from a state regular high school in Maracanaú, metropolitan region of Fortaleza, during the Supervised Internship. First, biology teachers at the target school responded to a discursive form about their biology classes, especially about immunology content before, during and after the remote teaching period provided by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, an analysis of the textbooks adopted by the school for the three years of high school was carried out, seeking to verify how the themes related to immunology were addressed in these materials. In addition, the students underwent a pre-test, an expository class, followed by the application of a board game entitled “A Trilha da Vacina” and a post-test to evaluate the effectiveness of the application of the game. The pre and post-test contained ten multiple-choice questions, with percentages ranging from 3% to 90% of correct answers in the pre-test, and from 29% to 94% in the post-test. The game was made of photographic paper that was fixed on a medium density fiberboard (MDF) board. All board art was custom designed for the activity with the help of Adobe Illustrator software. The board has 37 squares and 100 question cards, 84 of which are white and 16 pink cards, where the latter have a higher level of difficulty. In addition, it also consists of two dice and four colored pins. This work made a qualitative analysis of how gamification activities are positive for learning, and of other issues related to the teaching of immunology in high school. For the analysis of the books, the content analysis according to Bardin was used. Therefore, it’s suggested that the use of gamification is an effective auxiliary tool for teaching immunology. In addition, more investment is needed in the school structure with the best choice for textbooks, as well as for the use of active methodologies that encourage student participation so that it is possible for them to make connections between the contents and everyday situations.