At the Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, students use the board game "Pitch your green Idea" to develop their start-up ideas. Now the game "Feel – Act – Change" is supposed to enrich the teaching offers. On gamification in THWS teaching.
Published on 2 August 2023
"Business before pleasure" – probably everyone has heard this proverb before. The children have to do their homework before being allowed to go outside and play – that's how it was already in elementary school. But work and fun do not have to be clearly separated. In the context of digitalisation, the concept of gamification has become more and more popular. The concept describes the merging of work and play. Gamification aims to approach tedious, boring, or very complex tasks in a playful way. That is how the Federal Agency for Civic Education defines gamification.
Various THWS faculties have already started to use gamification – also to teach entrepreneurship. The project EntrepreneurSHIP is located at the Campus for Applied Research (CAF). This project aims to expand the founding culture at THWS. SHIP is a German acronym for sensitisation and leverage of innovative potentials. The project members sensitise and qualify students regarding all questions related to self-employment and startups. At the moment, the focus is placed on societal aspects of the founding process and sustainable business models. "Since the winter semester 2022/23, we have, among others, used the board game 'Pitch your green idea' in lectures and workshops", says Dr. Felix Liedel, research associate at the CAF.
The board game "Pitch your green idea"
"Pitch your green idea" combines a board game with a business game with the goal of developing a start-up idea. The game presents the players with societal challenges that must be solved in the course of the game using entrepreneurial approaches. The players must equally consider ecological, economic, and social aspects. The start-up idea created in this process can also act as basis for a real business idea. Thus, there are no winners nor losers in this game. The game can be played two ways: The short variant takes about two hours, the long variant can take up to six hours.
For Dr. Liedel the advantages of "Pitch your green idea" are obvious: "The game promotes a variety of different competences. Among them creative thinking, problem solving competence, cooperation, and presentation techniques." Games were simply a lot of fun and were thus simply beneficial in a study environment. His impression: All students who had played the game by then, had experienced a lot of fun and were very committed.
Extended gamification offers at THWS
From August, "Pitch your green idea" will be supplemented by the game "Feel – Act – Change". The EntrepreneurSHIP team of THWS have developed the game themselves. For this, the project team organised a workshop in December 2022, in which networking partners of the Main-Franconian start-up centres and other institutions contributed to the first game concept. The game "Feel – Act – Change" emerged from the ideas collected in the workshop.
Also in this game, the idea is to develop a social startup idea in three phases. Chantal Ebelsheiser is co-developer of the game. She is an EntrepreneurSHIP coach, trainer, and lecturer for social innovations, social entrepreneurship, and sustainability at various higher education institutions. For the THWS project, she collaborates with her colleague Michael Kriegel. "We hope to spark enthusiasm for social entrepreneurship with 'Feel – Act – Change'.", Ebelsheiser says. "The players are supposed to realised how much creative power they have, and that we can use market mechanisms to solve societal problems."
Advantages of gamification
To Ebelsheiser, the playful trial, testing and learning in a protected environment and the opportunity of losing without experiencing consequences, are one of the major advantages of gamification: "In the real world, making mistakes is perceived as something negative, especially in Germany. Playing grants us permission to lose." Because multiple factors must be considered in gamified environments, the players learn to recognise and implement underlying patterns. The reward mechanisms and goals which are built in motivate the players and thus increase the likelihood of successful learning.
Gamification can be used in almost any area, teaching in particular. There are numerous different tools to gamify teaching contents. Lecturers who have not tried gamification so far can use ready-made game systems like "Pitch your green idea" and "Feel – Act – Change" to start lecturing with gamification quickly and easily. All they must do for this is understanding and conveying the pedagogical intention of the game. In general, all games are educational. Also playing mere recreational games lets players develop and hone meta skills.
According to Ebelsheiser, gamification is no universal remedy either that works in any context. Gamification can also overwhelm learners. Hence, the choice of gamification must correspond to the target group. Students also differ in their degree of openness towards gamification depending on their degree programme. "With students, we realise #that, for example, students of traditional business administration are less open towards gamification than lets say students of media science" says Ebelsheiser. "The more mixed teams are, the easier it gets for people to give it a try."
Gamification no newfangled concept
Gamified learning spaces were less modern and progressive then one might think, Dr. Felix Liedel states. "Playing is one of the oldest cultural goods of humanity, and for good reason. Gaming teaches us to understand ourselves and others, take on societal roles, act cooperatively, define goals, and solve problems." Playing enables us to activate childlike interest, which creates the curiosity that is natural to many children. Some adults would lose this curiosity over the years, as Ebelsheiser explains.
Chantal Ebelsheiser can well imagine that gamification will keep gaining popularity due to the need for innovative ways of teaching and moving away from frontal instructions and students merely learning things by heart. "It is important to maintain a society's desire to learn", Ebelsheiser says. "Teaching should thus focus on promoting and maintaining this desire to learn." Gamification could help in this.
