2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This “GIFTS” paper describes an adaptation of a common restaurant or bar game to the classroom environment. The Team Trivia game is adapted and utilized to create an energetic and fun environment for reviewing content before major exams in a general education “Engineering in History” course. The course focuses on how engineering and technology development has influenced societal development throughout history.

Motivation: The motivation for creating this activity was the desire to create a more engaging and active content review experience for students in an Engineering in History course. The course contains many “facts” related to inventions, their inventors and dates, and their influence on societal development. Students often find learning facts and dates to be tedious, so I wanted to help them engage with the content in a “fun” way.
Objectives: The objective of this activity is to encourage students to review content before an exam. In the activity, students compete in teams to answer questions in a short time frame while music is playing in the background.

Practical Implementation Details: This activity is modeled after the Team Trivia game played in many restaurants and bars. The content is adapted from general trivia to course content.

What is needed: (1) A PowerPoint slide presentation comprised of 6 or 8 “rounds” of questions, with each “round” containing 3 questions (And each question slide has embedded music); (2) A Team Score Sheet; (3) Individual Team “Response cards;” (3) A prepared spreadsheet for recording team scores for each question and for summarizing total team scores at half-time and the game’s conclusion.

How it is played: Students break into teams (of their choosing) with approximately 4 students per team. Each question is displayed and read aloud; and a 1-minute segment of music is played while the question is displayed. By the time the music stops, all team responses – including the “answer” and the number of points wagered – must be submitted to the instructor. The instructor determines if the answer is correct or incorrect. If the answer is incorrect, the team earns zero points. If the answer is correct, the team earns the points wagered. During the first half of the game, teams can wager 1, 3, or 5 points per question, but can use each value only one time in each round of three questions. During the second half of the game, teams wager 2, 4, or 6 points per question each round. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins. In my implementation of this game, I award the top three teams extra credit points on the upcoming exam for which this activity provides review: 5 points (first place), 3 points (second place), and 1 point (third place).

Assessment: The assessment of this activity has been informal. Students have commented, both in person and on course evaluations that this activity was fun and helped them learn what they knew and didn’t know before each exam, so they had a better idea of what they still needed to study to prepare for the exam. An observation of this activity indicates that the students are very engaged and enthusiastic about this review. It is fast-paced and fun, and the music provides added energy.

This activity can be adapted for more problem-solving-based courses. The paper provides instructions, templates, and student feedback for this activity.