Engagement Games: A Case for Designing Games to Facilitate Real World Action - Lunchtime seminar Wedensday 2nd April

Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - 00:00

Engagement Games: A Case for Designing Games to Facilitate Real World Action - Lunchtime seminar Wedensday 2nd April 

The discourse around technology often focuses on its putative value in creating efficiency, even though the outcomes do not always seem to match the hype! It was refreshing then to hear Steve Walter from Emerson College dismiss the efficiency argument when he presented instead a 'gameful' approach as a way to create 'meaningful inefficiencies' and to engage people in community initiatives that affect their lives.
 
Steve, who is the Managing Director of Engagement Lab at Emerson College, Boston, was invited to the Education Department Wednesday, 2nd April to present work he and his colleagues have done using social networking technology and game play for urban planning and community development  projects. Steve was in Ireland as part of the Smart People for a Smart Economy event held in the Docklands on Thursday. The Engagement Lab at Emerson College was one of the sites for a meeting during the Ed Tech exchange in which Angela Rickard from the Education Department participated during January this year.
 
The Engagement Lab has already made considerable impact on both local and global initiatives that have resulted in creative approaches emerging from participants as young as 13 years of age. In one very successful example Community Planit, Steve presented, among other things, the intergenerational aspects of combining social networks with traditional town hall meetings. The involvement of young people, he noted, improved the 'behavior' of the adults, who took more care to lead by example and to attend to their grammar and language, while the young people involved reported that they felt more grown up and took the initiative more seriously than they otherwise might. Another striking example of creative and effective use of technology was evident in the game Up River, developed initially as an analogue game involving cups and water designed to teach about flood prediction. The digital version of the same game involves enabling communities along the Zambezi river to develop contacts using text messaging to report water levels (win phone credit for their efforts) and create informal networks in ever-widening social circles along the river.
 
The colleagues in Emerson's Engagement Lab have also recently introduced the game Community Planit in Moldova where, although the ostensible purpose is to look at the issue of Youth Unemployment, intercultural and cross-community issues will also play a part. Indeed the crisis in Crimea has heightened the tensions between Russian speaking and Romanian speaking communities there and it is hoped that Community Planit will give them a unique opportunity to develop a shared vision for the future of Moldova.
 
Colleagues in the Education, Department, Sociology Department as well as NIRSA, the Edward Kennedy Institute for Conflict Resolution and the Innovation Value Institute attending the seminar on Wednesday commented on resonances for work in this University in Steve's presentation.  We are also looking forward to continuing the conversation with Steve and the others in the Engagement Lab. We are very grateful to Ms Susan Cleary and Ms. Angie Smith from Public Affairs Office of the US Embassy for facilitating Steve's visit to Maynooth.
 
Submitted by Angela Rickard 7/4/14