"Short term, intensive and with final practical results!": Gamification workshop course of Tallinn Summer School
Tallinn Summer School opened its doors on the 11th of July, welcoming international participants eager to enjoy summer full of new experiences, knowledge and friendships. During Tallinn Summer School participants were offered some very interesting courses, including ones related to digital technologies, such as: Gamification Workshop, Data Mining Without Coding: Using RapidMiner in the Context of Education, Design of Digital Services for Health Behaviour Change and Design of Serious Games run by Digital Learning Games master’s programme teachers, students and professors of Tallinn University’s School of Digital Technologies.
The Gamification workshop was one of the most popular courses in Tallinn Summer School. It gathered people who wanted to create interactive and cool content from the mundane by adding game-inspired elements. In this workshop participants from Japan, Finland, Turkey, Latvia, Estonia, Germany were able to learn the basics of gamification, design gamified products or services and bring to life their ideas.
Kota Alex Saito is one of the participants of the Gamification workshop from Japan, who is now actually working and living in Estonia. His big love towards the digital world brought him to Estonia recently. Right now Alex works on the project, which will give a chance to transfer Estonian “Sauna culture” to Japan.
Alex, why did you decide to come to Estonia?
Nowadays Estonia is famous in the world as a very digitally developed E-country. And that is what caught my eye, because I myself have a very big interest towards the IT sphere. Mainly people move to other countries first to study and later are looking for a job, but in my case it was the other way. Right now I am working with Estonian companies who are designing saunas and my goal is to export those wooden products to Japan. And because I wanted to get some practical skills to use in my work, I decided to spend a week studying, combining fun and knowledge in Tallinn Summer School.
And why did you choose exactly the “Gamification workshop” course?
In my work I usually provide different services for my teams: facilitate meetings, host workshops with our clients to define strategies, concepts. And those kinds of things are usually run in a very serious frame. Sometimes there is too much information and people get simply bored. That’s why I would like to gamify a little the form of providing this information to my teams, which I hope will inspire them during work and will create a fun, creative and dynamic atmosphere. I thought that if I learn the basics of gamification within this course, I can make it happen.
What are your final expectations from this workshop?
First of all I really want to get basic knowledge of gamification and be able to apply new values, skills and knowledge in my business. I believe theory is good only when it goes together with the practical part. Our course leader Associate Professor Martin Sillaots who is teaching Game Design, Computer Graphic and Research Methods in Tallinn University manages to combine both theory and practice. I love that here we are creating teams, working on projects and seeing results. When I usually study theory, I always think about how I could use it in my work, and I am happy that here I can see it right away. That's why I like the style of summer school: short term, intensive and with final practical results!