Serious Game Rapid Online Co-design to Facilitate Change Within Education

Abstract

Serious games have potential for facilitating change processes but require rigorous, interdisciplinary design to be effective. A novel, rapid online workflow was developed for co-design of games for change with school teachers. Major design challenges included: short timescale; appropriately scaffolding a complex process; remote online interactions; and interdisciplinary communication. The resulting workflow is highly visual, structured, and focused on swift knowledge exchange between pedagogy and game experts, drawing on relevant frameworks. Two workshops used the new method, producing eight co-designed serious games. Analysis suggests the workflow is effective for knowledge exchange for the rapid and rigorous co-design of serious games and has advantages for inclusivity and confidence in the co-design process.

Serious 'Slow' Game Jam - A Game Jam Model for Serious Game Design

“…In terms of Theme and Support, every study considered [25] recommends domain experts as mentors or full participants, by integrating lecture-like content at key points the jams [32], providing curated thematic guidance [32], pairing professionals with game design experts [1,32] and other stakeholders [35] to ensure alignment with the goals of the activity, and providing a clearly structured journey through the whole activity [1,3]. The necessary additional Support for serious game jams, crucial to ensure the validity of the 'serious' content of games in development, also has implications for Participation and Teams (as can be seen in the recommendations for mentors/participants) and implies a strong need for robust knowledge exchange activities.…”