Abstract:

The skepticism of educational practitioners (e.g., teaching staff) about the usefulness of scientific evidence for their practice or the poorly practice-relevant questions addressed in research projects result in little consideration of scientific findings in educational practice (Gräsel, 2010; Nicholson-Goodman & Garman, 2007; Schrader, 2014; Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). In the literature, this condition is referred to as the "research practice gap" (e.g., Brühwiler & Leutwyler, 2020; Hartmann & Decristan, 2018). To overcome this "gap" and to increase the chance of applicability of findings in practice, a participatory approach is the key. This encourages involving the stakeholders as early as possible (e.g. Gräsel, 2010). In the communication and transfer project "enorM - How do we want to learn in the future?", which was carried out as part of the German Year of Science 2022, the principle of early involvement of the target group was implemented in the form of a participatory bottom-up process. In particular, students, whose view of tomorrow's learning is often underrepresented in many negotiation and decision-making processes, were to be able to contribute their broad, detailed knowledge of ideas around the topic of "learning in the future" from the very beginning. In several steps during the project year, we first collected questions on this topic from this target group and then worked on them in various formats with the target group and experts. Our main product was a serious game on the topic of "learning in the future," into which a large part of the ideas on learning in the future was integrated. The development of this game was also based on the above-mentioned principle. Thus, at an early stage of the game development, the later target group was involved in the conception phase of the game in the form of a highly participatory and low-threshold workshop. The impulses, ideas and insights gained in the workshop were to be used by the participating agency in exchange with the project team to further develop the central game idea as well as its design and to create a test version on this basis, which was evaluated again by the target group and then adapted. The workshop took place at a school with a particularly gaming-oriented class and a total of 28 students between the ages of 13 and 15. In our talk, we briefly introduce the project "enorM - How do we want to learn in the future?" and focus on the participatory game development and in particular on the groundbreaking development workshop at the beginning of the conception phase. We present in accordance with the impact chain according to Henke, Pasternack & Schmid (2006) essential elements and examples from the conception and implementation of the workshop, as well as the output in terms of the diverse, spontaneous ideas and impulses generated by the students in direct exchange, and the evaluation of the event. The possibility for students to have a part in deciding at a very early stage - not only with regard to the design of the serious game as a product, but also with regard to the course and content of the workshop - turned out to be a central indicator and most likely increases the chance that the game will find application in practice.

Keywords:

Serious game, participation, development, learning in the future, research practice gap, transfer, stakeholders, participatory approach, evaluation.