Resumen de Unit Kemps: A Matching Card Game to Learn Physical Quantities, Units, and Symbols
Chloé Lhardy, Héctor García Ortega, Jesús Gracia Mora, Armando Marín-Becerra, Antonio Reina, Miguel Reina
Educational games have attracted attention as valuable didactic instruments since they combine a proven efficiency in learning improvement with a fun and enjoyable atmosphere. Despite the increasing number of educational game contributions treating a wide variety of topics, to the best of our knowledge, none revise units or physical quantities. “Unit Kemps” is a 4- to 12-player funny, engaging, easy-to-play, and trilingual (English, French, and Spanish) game. Based on the French card game “Kemps”, the main goal of the game is to match 4 cards of a kind, in this case a physical or chemical quantity, its symbol, its unit, and the instrument used to measure it. More importantly, the game targets learning physical quantities and to distinguish among the physical property, the unit, and their respective symbols in an amusing and relaxing atmosphere. The game was tested by 47 first- and second-year students from the Facultad de Quı́mica at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), with encouraging results in different aspects including content, playability, and engagement. Moreover, a pre- and postevaluation revealed an encouraging enhancement in memorization concerning the identification of physical and chemical quantities after playing the game. In summary, playing “Unit Kemps” might be a useful tool for students and educators to reinforce basic scientific curricula concepts and also to interact among them in a playful environment.
