Sesame - Wir lernen Gamedesign

The project had two aims: to enable teachers to integrate game design methods into computer science and art lessons, and to get their assessment on whether introducing game design in their classe...

The project had two aims: to enable teachers to integrate game design methods into computer science and art lessons, and to get their assessment on whether introducing game design in their classes could interest pupils for IT. The key objective was to gain the corroboration and meaningful feedback of practitioners (arts and informatics teachers for 15+ year old students at general schools) of the innovative potential of integrating game design into their classes. To achieve this goal, we focused our activities on a conceptual approach for such an integration tested and developed with over 20 teachers. Obstacles and challenges in developing a common course syllabus were discussed with them. The partnership thus managed to establish a first evidence base and interested user pool for a larger follow-up project which would lead to effectively introducing game design in school teaching as part of arts and informatics curricula. The participating teachers have used the material developed and thus ensure the durability of the successful implementation and provide a solid foundation for the continued development in direction of a future implementation into the school curricula.

We prepared and carried out two transnational workshops with teachers, one taking place in Berlin (DE) , the second in Ventspils (LV) each composed of Latvian and German school teachers, teacher students, design and tech trainers. Game design experts introduced the participants into the essence of playing games, the potential for education, the basics for game making and how to introduce and guide pupils to making a first game both in analogue and with simple software in groups. The participants took on the role of the pupils and thus learned hands-on how to interact with their students by understanding how a game is made. Following this first-hand experience, teachers gave feedback on their take-aways and discussed ways to include them in their classes. The next step was to follow-up with pilot projects directly with pupils at schools and assess the experience in terms of corroborating the presumed potential for a full adaptation into school curricula as goal for a larger project. The results of the project have been circulated to schools, sent to school education platforms for publication, and published on the Erasmus+ results platform.

The key output was the creation of a network interested in following-up the project idea for teacher training both students and professionals. The successful skills transfer on basic elements of game design teaching - now corroborated by practicing teachers and teachers-in-training - has proved to be so compelling that we easily found pertinent partners for a European consortium in place to submit an application for a larger project. This network will carry on the work beyond the SESAME project lifetime and with two further countries (DK, RS) on board, we can ensure an broader geographic transfer. The output included thus a positive confirmation of the potential benefit and the feasiblity of introducing game design to teachers with no prior knowledge of video game development and specific IT skills, i.e. that a targeted introduction would suffice to familiarise them with enough knowledge to encourage them to use this knowledge in class. The related results were two successful workshop proving the feasalibility of the knowledge transfer and the power of encouragement of dedicated workshops, which led to the next results, the pilots carried out by participating teachers, designed on their own, and documented in our final video.