Collaboration Platform for Public and Private Actors in Educational Games Development

摘要

This paper describes innovation platform development for co-creation of serious games. Innovation platforms offer modes of collaboration for schools, universities, citizens, and companies. The main actors of this project are three universities and two science centres in Finland. Several modes for collaboration have been tried in order to discover permanent structures that would benefit various stakeholders. Interests of different stakeholders have been analysed in order to find conditions for successful co-creation. Problems that prevent efficient collaboration have been identified, which are predominantly financial issues. Moreover, some more game-specific issues have been discovered: the understanding of use of games in education and pedagogical goals and methods are not necessarily shared between game developers and educators. Game developers seek to create games that are entertaining, whereas educators want tools that support curriculum goals and enhance learning. However, the idea of collaborative design practices in learning has been welcomed by all stakeholders. In particular, the co-creation in science centres has started successfully, bringing small start-up companies and school students together around educational application development where science centres act as facilitators. Recommendations for best practices in universities are drafted in order to find efficient ways of implementation.