Covid-19 changed our lives and education is not the exception. It had to be “virtualized” and teach over the distance. Teaching online brings lots of challenges to educators, one of them is helping students learn in the new reality. Games and movement can help to make this happen. It is not a recent trend, it has existed for many years, however the term may have been addressed even more in the latest times. If people remember the famous movie “Mary Poppins”, it can be noticed that she sums up gamification very good with the quote "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and SNAP! the job's a game.” When people talk about gamification, they usually think of children, but adults also need to take "gamified" courses.
Games and movement in learning involves the use of game-based elements such as scoring, peer competition, teamwork, and scoring tables to increase participation, it helps students absorb new information and test their knowledge. It can be applied to school-based subjects, but it is also widely used in self-study applications and courses, which shows that the role of games and movement will not stop as we grow up. On the other hand, technology has penetrated into our daily lives, changing the way we live, shop, work, play, eat, interact with people and socialize. Policy makers began to seriously study the potential benefits of using technology to simplify the workload of teachers.
The use of games and the application of movement in the virtual classroom has become a great ally in order to achieve objectives in this context. It is not just online playing, but a strategy to help the learning process through gaming and during the COVID 19 crisis has played a much major role. The health crisis has provided a new stage to teach and help students. For this reason, educators need to relearn and redesign the way of approach, it is a total new scenario for everyone.
This paper wants to show how gaming and movement in Universidad Estatal a Distancia has overcame distance and has helped most of the students to reach their courses objectives. Besides, how professors have taken this strategy into account in order to provide an online environment that make students more susceptible to learning.
Keywords: Gamification, pedagogy, covid19, emotions, movement, empathy, educators, distance education, gap filling.