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WHEN PLAY IS WORK
Under the wing of the educational technology centre of Tallinn Univer- sity, there is a group of people whose work involves playing. Yes, you read that correctly! A scientist must test their work.
However, more than playing – games are devel- oped, researched and distributed. In addition, all of this is taught to the Master’s students of digital learning games.
Where commercial games make a lot of money from studios, it not usually the case with learn- ing games. The benefit to society of creating serious games is that learning becomes attrac- tive and a possibility to acquire new skills while playing is created.
The development of games in the university has been quite rapid. There have been many chang- es in a short span of time. Ten years ago, only Martin Sillaots was working with serious games i.e. games that have a purpose other than en- tertainment. Games like ”Seleag (Timemesh)”, ”SiLang”,EMPLOY”, ”EU-DO-IT”, etc. were created. The first of them taught history and the rest helped people get by in a foreign country and dealt with foreign language problems, for instance, with newcomers.
Several serious game projects are in action. The purpose of higher education development ”HERA” and ”ALIEN” is the better imple- mentation of active studying in the university through problem-based studying. At the same time, there are other projects like ”LoeL” that focus on teaching emotions to young people or ”DT4S” that teach sustainable development to 12-16-year-olds. Anything can be learned through games.
An ecosystem services learning board game has been created through ELU projects as well as several ”G.A.STEM” games. In addition, a game about research methods is in the making as ordered from HITSA. The students’ portfolio of games can be found at dlg.tlu.ee/games.
Bets are also placed on training future learning games designers but in the future, it is hoped to involve even more partners from outside the university and use more of the newest VR or learning analytics technology. The partners are mostly European countries and also several Asian countries with the game ”ALIEN”.
Later, PhD student Triinu Jesmin joined and games like ”Language Games”, ”LEAP” and ”DesignIT” were created. Research projects brought gaming to the educational field of the
Data analysis lecturer Triinu Jesmin, associate professor of serious games, 50 university, where it is now thriving. Martin Sillaots
TALLINN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE / NO. 14 / SPRING 2020