Transporte de substâncias através da membrana plasmática: com utilização de um jogo didático digital para alunos do ensino médio

Abstract

The understanding of teachers on the main difficulties their students face on learning biological concepts might aid them to adopt new motivating teaching strategies, thusly transforming significantly the students’ learning process and their acquisition of knowledge. New teaching strategies are important enhancers of the learning process, mainly when it comes to complex abstract concepts, as those which occur on the study of Cytology. This way, the present work aimed at the crafting and application of a didactic unit (DU) on the morphophysiology of the plasma membrane, through a educational game as learning evaluation tool. This research was conducted with 36 students of the freshman year of high-school at Almirante Tamandaré State School, in Extremoz/RN. The method application was developed in five stages: 1st) Crafting and planning the didactic unit’s exercises in accordance to the original school schedule; 2nd) Assessing students’ background knowledge; 3rd) Designing a digital educational game as part of the DU; 4th) Crafting and application of a DU based on the significant learning; 5th) Evaluation of the potential and limitations of the DU. The methods used demonstrate some of the elements of the research-action. As for the data collection, questionnaires, models, participant observations, and the performance of the students in the digital game were used. A quantitative/qualitative analysis was used, including the content analysis. The obtained results point at the students’ scarce knowledge about the cell and its morphophysiology. The didactic unit contributed to a significant learning of the biological concepts discussed, and moreover, it promoted a positive student behavior. The game was efficient to evaluate their learning and to engage students into problem solving. Therefore, the Didactic Unit exploring the digital didactic game constitutes a teaching research experience which led to the manufacturing of an educational product that can be used on elementary schools considering the teaching-learning of substance transportation through the plasmatic membrane.