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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.

In this paper, we will introduce the Game Enhanced learning Model (GEM), which describes a range of gameoriented 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 variousgame-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 afacilitator 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, andfinally 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.

The short paper presents preliminary findings from a pilot study on how students become motivated through design of learning games in math. The research is carried out in a Danish public school with two classes of 5th graders (N = 42 students). Over the course of two weeks, the students work with a design template for a runner game in the Unity 3D game design engine. The students are introduced to the concept of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) as a game design principle and are asked to design levels for a math runner game, which are both engaging as well as a meaningful way of learning math. In this way, the students are positioned as “math level designers”, which means that they both have to redesign the difficulty of the runner game as well as the difficulty of the mathematical questions and possible answers.

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.

This paper presents the challenges for university teachers when new teaching strategies are implemented. Blended learning, flipped classroom, gamification as well as a combination of traditional and new pedagogical approaches are on the agenda in engineering educations. One of the challenges for the teachers is to adjust to the new way of teaching. We will use two cases; one longitudinal study and one experimental study to present and discuss a process of blended learning strategy in programming classes from a teacher’s point of view: the strategy, the planning, the implementation and the learning outcome. The second case show that the blended learning model for programming classes works very well for another type of students. The results showed that blended learning using game elements is a successful way concerning the learning outcome, but is a challenge for the teachers involved. Finally, we will conclude with guidelines for other teachers, who want to use blended learning in their teaching activities.

This workshop aims at building bridges between the Interactive Digital Storytelling community, the game technology industry sector and interactive media content producers. The goal is to initiate collaborative projects and to create a foundation for an international community of researchers, industry and practitioners in the field of Interactive Digital Storytelling. The workshop will thus invite participants to present and discuss the challenges related to the research, design, development and evaluation of interactive digital storytelling artifacts, experiments and products.

Our experience at the Media Technology department, Aalborg University Copenhangen has shown that learning core concepts and techniques in image processing is a challenge for undergraduate students. One possible cause for this is the gap between understanding the mathematical formalism of such concepts and being able to use them for solving real-world problems. The Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogy is an approach, which favours learning by applying knowledge to solve such problems. However, formulating an appropriate project for image processing courses presents challenges on how to appropriately present relevant concepts and techniques to students. This article presents our redesign of an image processing course at the Media Technology department, which focused on relevant concept and technique presentation and design projects and employed a game engine (Unity) in order to present such concepts and techniques. In a Unity environment, we developed visualizations of core concepts and basic image processing techniques. Unity was also used by students for developing projects (games) as assignments. The first offering of this new course format has been an intense learning experience for the instructional team. Media Technology students have welcomed the idea of using for image processing a tool they already use for other courses. Moreover, the visualizations and design projects in Unity have proved to increase student understanding compared to previous semesters, where other programming libraries were used. Since these preliminary results were very positive, we are planning to conduct a large scale quantitative study on the use of Unity and student understanding of image processing concepts during next year.

Production workshops such as game jams are popular waysof letting participants acquire hands-on knowledge and experiencein producing an artifact or game prototype in avery limited timespan. Some of the games made at theseproduction workshops are later published with great success,and create the foundation for new start-up companies.There are, however, an even larger group of very creativeand innovative games and artifacts with great potentialthat go unpublished. This potentially leads to a loss ofentrepreneurial opportunities and ultimately the jobs andcareers such games could have fostered. The authors ofthis paper have founded, co-organized, and participated innumerous production workshops where great productionswere presented as functional prototypes only to be discontinuedat the end of the game jam. There is still a lackof a comprehensive framework that concretely describes theactivities and conditions at production workshops and gamejams, which can spark the interest of becoming an entrepreneur.In this study, we explore how intense developmentand production-oriented workshops may impact entrepreneurialintent and the subsequent conversion into entrepreneurialbehavior, with the aim of proposing an entrepreneurialframework of activities and conditions at which entrepreneurialintent can thrive and grow within the connes of suchworkshops. An exploratory research case study approachwas employed, focusing on entrepreneurial potential at gamejams. An online survey with a sample consisting of 56 participantsfrom several game jams was performed to investigatethe mindset behind the numerous developers never pursuingtheir entrepreneurial opportunity. Furthermore, obser-vations and semi-structured interviews were conducted withgame company owners in order to explore the factors andmindset of those that pursued the entrepreneurial path, andto investigate ndings of the survey in more depth. The surveyand interviews concentrated on the further developmentprocess of the game jam projects as entrepreneurial kickos, and the exploration focused particularly on identifyingactivities and conditions at game jams which may aid inheightening the entrepreneurial intent. Moreover, the studyhighlights barriers for publishing game jam games.

Game jams have become a rapid growing phenomenon. Every year brings new and larger game jams. In this study, we closely followed the world’s largest single location game jam in order to explore the engagement among participants. The authors joined the organizing group of the Nordic Game Jam 2013, and gained a favorable opportunity to observe the 470 game developers efforts during the 48 hours of non-stop development. The paper presents the results of two surveys conducted just before and after the event as well as observations during the game jam. The main motivational factors among participants were to develop games and to meet new people. We believe that the community building as well as the motivation and engagement due to social aspects and the desire to learn more about game development among participants at such events might have beneficial ripple effects, which are valuable to investigate more closely.

The paper aims at one of the problems many of the new multidisciplinary engineering educations encountered when teaching technical topics to students who are neither technically skilled nor aspired to learn these. The research continues and extends a study that has been done over a period of five years and tested on over 400 students at the bachelor part of the relatively new multidisciplinary engineering education Medialogy at Aalborg University Copenhagen. The author successfully found a number of pedagogical approaches for teaching technical topics to the challenging diverse students. The gap between technical and artistic minded students is, however, increased once the students reach the sixth semester. The complex algorithms of the artificial intelligence course seemed to demotivate the artistic minded students even before the course began. This paper will present the extensive changes made to the sixth semester artificial intelligence programming course, in order to provide a highly motivating direct visual feedback, and thereby remove the steep initial learning curve for artistic minded students. The framework was developed with close dialog to both the game industry and experienced master students, so the contend directly links to the demands of the students future challenges.

At Aalborg University’s department of Medialogy, we are utilizing the Problem Based Learning method to encourage students to solve game design problems by pushing the boundaries and designing innovative games. This paper is concerned with describing this method, how students employ it in various projects and how they learn to analyse, design, and develop for innovation by using it. We will present various cases to exemplify the approach and focus on how the method engages students and aspires for innovation in digital entertainment and games.

The technical subjects chosen are within programming. Using image-processing algorithms as means to provide direct visual feedback for learning basic C/C++. The pedagogical approach is within a PBL framework and is based on dialogue and collaborative learning. At the same time the intention was to establish a community of practice among the students and the teachers. A direct visual feedback and a higher level of merging between the artistic, creative, and technical lectures have been the focus of motivation as well as a complete restructuring of the elements of the technical lectures. The paper will present the test results based on over 200 students, gathered over a period of three years.The paper will explain different steps of the new programming courses in detail, and relate students test data to each of the initiatives causing the leaps of improvement. Furthermore the students’ technical abilities and enhanced balance between the interdisciplinary disciplines of the study are analyzed. The conclusion is that the technical courses have got a higher status for thestudents. The students now see it as a very important basis for their further study, and their learning results have improved to a satisfactory level seen from the study board’s point of view.

Worldwide a growing number of educational institutions are trying to meet the demands for a more humanistic focused computer scientist to solve problems related to the human factors of computing and the growing experience economy. By introducing multidisciplinary studies in the field of media technology, a broader segment of students are consequently enrolled. One of the challenges of these new educations is to motivate the artistic minded students in learning the technical aspects of the curriculum, as they need these qualifications to work in the industry. At Aalborg University’s department of Medialogy, we employ problem based learning and game design to engage these students in learning the technical elements. This paper will describe our approach and exemplify the method by introducing various examples of student projects, where the interest in game design combined with problem based learning have engaged and motivated artistic students to learn technical topics on their own.