At the WHL we use different (business) games within different Master courses.

Overall our students are rather critical in relation to the perceived utility of theses games – and interestingly this attitude hardly differs between the different games/courses, though they are completely different.

For a rough overview on the results have a look at this file: whl game survey

Main topics of conference are:

- Keynote by Alex Moseley (University of Leicester): Games for grown-ups: using non-digital games to create adult learning contexts

- Topical presentations: motivation, health, business

- Discussion of future research agenda

Physical Venue: Haus der Wirtschaft – Am Schillertheater 2 – 10625 Berlin

Main parts of the conference will also be made accessible online.

Please contact Bernd Remmele (bernd.remmele_at_whl-lahr.de) for registration to the conference – physical and online.

Invitation letter to: final gambaloa conference

The purpose of the meeting was to plan and implement the dissemination stage of the project.  Dissemination is an increasingly important but typically tricky part of research projects.  The partners decided to host an end of project meeting to be held in Berlin in June.  The event will bring together a select group of academics and policy and practitioner organisations to engage with three briefing papers on games and motivation, health and business.  As everyone is being forced to count the pennies and cents we are going to stream the conference online and enable virtual participation in the event.  Watch this space for further details!

This was my first trip abroad with the games-based learning people and it was great to see the effort and care invested in building great working relationships.  Nathalie, Lien and Evelien organised a pervasive game where we used Kickbikes to navigate our way around Leuven solving puzzles and then on the next day we worked in teams to make world-famous Belgian pralines. 

All of that energy fuelled the discussions of what the partners should work on beyond GAMBALOA.  One of the more difficult tasks of developing funding is finding the right partners, especially when it comes to the broader and bigger EU applications.  If you don’t have the right partners different perspectives, difficult personalities, and unexplained agendas can prevent anything being achieved when tasks and work packages are divided up and shared.  This is why working with such a great bunch of people is a joy and hopefully it will continue with ideas from using games to reduce homophobia because that seems really important, to using Lego… because Lego is awesome! Again, watch this space for further details.

James Duggan

A member of the Gambaloa team took part in the Creating educational apps course of ATiT in Leuven (http://www.atit.be/apps-course).
The acquired knowledge and skills are definitely usable for creating small games for older adults!

We presented a common paper:

“Not Just for Children: Game-Based Learning for Older Adults”

and had individual presentations and workshops:

from Nathalie (with a colleague): “Game-Based Assessment; Implementing an Android Application on Tablet PCs for Peer-Evaluation”

from Nicola (with colleagues): “Staying the Course – a Game to Facilitate Students’ Transitions to Higher Education”

from Bernd: “What do we Learn From the Game of Catallaxy?”

They introduced  contemporary toys and games (also digital) of children to older people in order to improve intergenerational learning and to increase social relatedness of older people.

Take a look at: http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsmclaughlinwow/

The four proposed dimensions for the analysis of educational games in relation to the meaning they generate are: factual, time, social, and play/learn.

I would be grateful for comments and critiques …

Bernd

Further information about how we will contribute will follow in due time.