GameON - Game-based learning in School Education

GameON is an internationally oriented project in the field of serious gaming and gamification, which focuses on the development and design of a textbook on this topic with a view to implementing it in schools. It is an ERASMUS+ project in the Key Action 'Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices' in the action 'Strategic Partnerships for school education'. It is an internationally oriented project with a duration of 18 months.

Considering how familiar young people are with games and mobile touchscreen devices and how much time they spend with them, the question can be asked whether this development cannot be put to good use for learning processes and how it can be integrated. The GameON consortium consists of five partners from four countries: Germany, Great Britain (Scotland), Portugal (Azores) and Greece. Two schools, two universities and a technology partner are involved. The project partners believe that a sustainable increase in learners' skills can be achieved more easily if learners are motivated. To achieve this, the consortium aims to create a book that helps teachers to implement new game-based learning approaches in the classroom. The aim of the project is to write a book that takes into account school-related issues and approaches to serious games and gamification and presents them to teachers.

Serious Games have been growing in popularity as educators begin to recognize and understand the potential they offer. At the same time, learners are becoming more and more accustomed to games in their daily lives, with a number of learners growing up with computer games or games on smartphones and tablets. In addition to the increasing penetration of mobile devices into our daily lives and the increasing availability of computers and laptops, technology is also constantly improving. The consortium believes that now is the right time for such a project because technology and market penetration have developed to such an extent that mobile devices are almost always close at hand. The use of smartphones has grown so much that almost all teenagers either own a smartphone or have access to one. Smartphones are no longer luxury items that only some people can afford, but have become everyday items.

The consortium aims to exchange information and learn from each other, drawing on the expertise of the various partners. The aim is to analyze existing games and to examine the extent to which they are suitable for teaching. In addition, the aim is to explore different pedagogical approaches to learning with games and to publish all the results in the GameON book. This should also help to provide a basis and practical guidance for teachers to begin to integrate games more fully into their teaching. Particular attention is paid to the possibility of using games to support at-risk learners, learners with educational disadvantages, and learners with special needs. The aim here is to find out to what extent serious games or gamification elements can be an appropriate way to reach and motivate them.

The book is seen as one way of supplementing teachers' skills to help motivate learners. The project supports the integration of game-based learning into regular school classes and offers materials to increase teachers' digital skills. This is implemented by introducing teachers to learning with serious games and gamification elements.

One reason for carrying out this project in a transnational way is that the book benefits from drawing on the diverse experiences of an international consortium and paying attention to school and learning situations in different countries. Through the multinational approach and the analysis of different country-specific school curricula during development, the book will be more compatible with teaching in different countries. This should also support wider international dissemination and is crucial to promoting a more consistent approach across Europe.

At the same time, the consortium can also test how the book is understood in different countries during the design and development process. Ultimately, it makes perfect sense to create a European resource that is highly relevant to improving education in all countries.