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In order to establish new and motivating learning environments, we have developed the "Purposive Game Production " concept. Our students at the Medialogy education have different interests within the Medialogy curriculum, but had a desire to know how they could use their knowledge, skills and competences from their study when graduating. In order to let them experience this first hand, and to improve employability, we wanted to enable learning activities where students could experience collaboration, communication and management of a cross-disciplinary project, with a goal to produce a purposeful game. These skills are included in the AAU Problem Based Learning curriculum, but are not stated as explicit learning goals and are not especially valued in students work. Thus, our basic idea is that students should be embedded in a larger, more complexly organized game production group, and that they would get motivated to develop and practice technical skills needed for game and interactive media productions. Over the last four years, the concept has developed to a production environment very close to a real game company, where students could practice technical-, communicative- and management skills. Currently, there is not much documentation about using game development as a learning environment, especially not at university level. In order to gain more knowledge and develop new learning environments aimed at enabling students to practice technical, communication and management skills, we have started 4 years ago to organize and document the game production semesters, changing the formats and experiments every year. In this paper, we will summarize this 4-year's long study, where a multitude of methods has been used, such as surveys, interviews, and observations, including recent interviews with the participants from the first interventions and analyses of the processes. Our investigation indicates that students are becoming more motivated and that they are acquiring a lot of experience in fields, which are not directly a part of the curriculum, such as communication in larger teams, management of complex productions and technical production skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will introduce the Game Enhanced learning Model (GEM), which describes a range of game-oriented learning activities. The model is intended to give an overview of the possibilities of game-based learning in general and all the way up to purposive game productions. In the paper, we will describe the levels of the model, which is based on our experience in teaching professional game development at university level. Furthermore, we have been using the model to inspire numerous educators to improve their students’ motivation and skills. The model presents various game-based learning activities, and depicts their required planning and expected outcome through eight levels. At its lower levels, the model contains the possibilities of using stand-alone analogue and digital games as teachers, utilizing games as a facilitator of learning activities, exploiting gamification and motivating students through role-play. The higher levels include modifying existing games, fundamental game development, creating games while enhance learning in a desired topic, and finally the development of purposive games. It is our experience that the four lower levels, which are concerned with using games in the classroom, gamification and roleplay, can be applied by almost any teacher in any topic - if assistance is available at the first sessions. It is however in the four higher levels, which are concerned with game development, that we experience the greatest impacts. Most so with digital game development since these levels also simultaneously improve students’ technical skills and motivation to learn programming. In order to illustrate the use of the model, we will describe an initiative to change the renowned Aalborg University Problem Based Learning model into a more production-oriented approach. The initiative was named “The Purposive Game Production” and focused on accommodating a range of wishes from students while making the education more tailored towards finding the students’ passion and securing a job after graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Danish primary schools the lack of motivation among students in the last grades is a big problem, and especially among boys. At the same time there is a political pressure on the primary schools there should be more focus on technical courses (e.g. math and science) and more students should continue their education either in college or in training schools. There is an identified need for learning designs that can engage a broad spectrum of learners in meaningful learning activities that develop motivation and resilience in order to continue education. To solve those problems many primary schools have started to use different kind of games in the teaching. Several studies have shown good results for students when producing their own games, they will get motivated, they learn programming, and they can see the benefit of learning and getting an education, but those learning activities require a lot of pioneering spirit, knowledge and skills as well as cooperation from the involved teachers. This study focus on how a team of public school teachers have developed the use of a game production which dealt with several subjects as programming, Danish language, geography, social subjects and “nature and technology” as well as motivating students to learn. About 60 students from the 9th grade were involved. In order to investigate the teachers’ experiences during the purposive game production, we have followed the teachers’ work during 4 months until the students’ games were launched. The findings illustrate that there are great potentials in using the power of game development in education, but it requires a useful structure for teachers using this tool in their teaching. We conclude with guidelines for other educators, who want to incorporate a purposive game production in their own activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Game based learning has proven to have many possibilities for supporting better learning outcomes, when using educational or commercial games in the classroom. However, there is also a great potential in using game development as a motivator in several other kinds of learning scenarios. Using game development as an approach for including game based learning in various educations has become more accessible due to more user friendly game development tools and systems. This study will thus focus on an exploration on how game development motivates students and what they learn when creating games. We exemplify the potential of using game fabrication as a learning environment with the investigation of a game production, which involved over 25 students across semesters. In order to investigate students' experiences during this purposive game production, we set up an experiment where students were "hired" to work in a virtual game development company. Students then had to produce a game concerning global warming during their 2.5 months semester project. The main results indicated that students who worked on the purposive game production acquired several new technical and analytical skills, they increased their skills in production management, and they were more motivated to continue their studies after the production. The findings illustrate that there are great potentials in harnessing the power of game development in education. We conclude with a framework of best practice guidelines for other educators, who want to incorporate a purposive game production in their own activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]