Serious Games in Higher Education

The project will contribute to implementing “serious games” as a central pedagogical learning platform for the master program  industrial economics and technology management at UiA.

The main objective of the project is to innovate and strengthen our students’ learning and expertise by means of “serious games”, a digitalized, project-based learning form. 

Since the Autumn 2018, we have gained experience using the AlbaSim Project Management (PM) Game in several project management courses. Albasim PM-Game is a “not for profit” software where all income is used for further development of the game.

We will share our experiences from implementing serious games at the university in several upcoming conferences during the  Summer and  Autumn of 2020. The first conference is Edulearn which will take place July 6th and 7th. 

We are also developing  serious games for other courses in the program.  Currently (Summer 2020) we are in the process of making a game about Lean Production.

We use the serious game platform Wegas through the AlbaSim portal (link here)

If pilots get to simulate flying before actually trying it, why shouldn`t students of project management subjects also get to simulate??

We want to give the students a simulated environment to test their capabilities and skills as Project managers (PM) in a semi-realistic scenario. They are introduced to the case, they apply for the role and are tested for prerequisites in order to be accepted for the complex job as a PM. Thereafter they need to sharpen their knowledge and put it to the test! They will have to make decisions that they instantly will feel the effect of, either by impacts on the project or feedback from management or customers. Will they make the right decisions and navigate the project to success? Or will they be part of the sad statistic where overruns in cost and time deems the project unsuccessfull

Learning should be fun!