Despite the lockdowns, the travelling restrictions and the difficulties to even meet physically in our organizations, one thing was clear for the Gamechangers team: we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to spread the benefits of game-based learning among educators. So after multiple scenarios, plan A, B, C and even D, we decided to give it a chance and move the whole “Gamechangers Experience” to the online environment.

Remember Gamechangers?

Gamechangers is a non-formal learning program for educators from the Baltic region that equips participants with practical knowledge on competence-based learning, educational game design and civic education. This year’s 2.0 edition involved additional countries, gathering educators from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia.

The learning journey included training activities on civic education, game-based learning and educational game design, as well as local game tests, mentoring and support and a final stage with an international Game festival to share and exchange good practices.

Program launch and online training activity

After the official program launch on 9th of October, we held our first content day on Saturday 24th October 2020. During almost 6 hours (with some breaks in between!) we:

  • got to know one another a bit better;
  • had an online teambuilding activity;
  • explored the topic of civic education with real examples from our communities;
  • discovered the basics of game-based learning and educational game design.

We held our second content day on 31st of October, where we discussed game types and we took a closer look at the insides of game design following the MDA model and using concrete examples. Finally, working groups were formed and we had a full-on game hackaton in which teams chose the topic, learning objectives and target group for their future game, and developed the first raw concept.

Finally, the last content day of the online training took place on 6th of November, where working teams presented their game trailers and first test results. We evaluated the online training activity and we had the chance to get to know the mentors (alumni from last year’s edition of Gamchangers) who will accompanied teams for the rest of the journey.

Game Labs

In between content days (held in the weekend), participants had the chance to also attend “Game Labs”: sessions of 90 minutes held in the evening of week days which were dedicated to exploring, playing and analiyzing from a meta perspective different types of educational games.

Webinars

After the end of the training activity, two more webinars were held on 16th of November and 15th of December, respectively, on the topics of “Debriefing after games: algorithms and psychological aspects” and “Visual game design”.

Gamechangers Fest

During the online festival, implemented on 13th and 14th of March 2021, attendants had the chance to:

  • Get inspired by experts from the research, youth work and game design fields.
  • Discover new online/offline educational games on civic education, soft skills and entrepreneurship
  • Interact, exchange and network with like-minded people from all over Europe
  •  To promote the development of interactive and game-based learning approaches in education

During the two-day event we had the honor to host four guest speakers coming from the research, international youth work and game design fields  and to involve a number of partners from the international youth field who have designed/produced educational resources on various topics. 

Read more about the online fest here.

“Gamechangers was a non-formal learning program for educators initiated by Shokkin Group Estonia and АРТа. Ассоциация российских тренеров with the support of Theodor-Heuss-Kolleg, and Федеральное агентство по делам молодежи / Росмолодежь.