Course | iCamp46

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iCamp 46 – an ongoing GameWise project The framework of the iCamp course
Each year, week 46 in Denmark is dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship. At VID Gymnasier, this is seen as an opportunity for all students to work with the essential skill sets of these two competences in a problem-oriented, cross-disciplinary fashion. Earlier, this week-long course has had iterations that did not include any particular insights along the lines of the GameWise project, but from 2013 the gamification part of the GameWise model has been integral in the conception of the course. As such, the week is conceived as a week-long game to structure and nurture motivation among the students, as they work in cross-disciplinary teams from the business and technical educational programs at VID Gymnasier to solve a real-life issue facing a client from the local business or public affairs world.
Evolving the iCamp
One of the advantages of an internationally operating, but locally based project such as GameWise is that the local variant can continually iterate on different insights from the international partners. The first iteration of the iCamp 46, which is described in the GameWise magazine – was quite a success, but several problems were pointed out in feedback from the visiting international partners as well as from teachers and students involved. The second iteration is a reaction to this feedback, and these revised rules are presented here on the website to accurately reflect the current status of the course. In particular, the feedback from external partners indicated that the economic system implemented at the first iteration was at an inappropriate level of complexity. One the one hand, it gave some students a lot of motivation, but on the other hand the wide variety of scores available combined with the arbitrariness of many different teachers with varied backgrounds assigning these scores, meant that some student groups quickly felt hopelessly behind and simply ignored the game. At the same time a variety of activities were allowed inside the rules to earn higher scores, but some of these were declared cheating by the teachers, which seemed to hamper the free exchange of money and thus limit the engagement of groups in relation to each-other. This was reflected in the lack of any of the social media activity that usually flows from all engagement. Internally, the feedback focused on the roles of the different students. In particular, the 3^rd year students gave feedback indicating that since VID Gymnasier already focused on innovation, they were having a hard time getting motivated for one more project in that vein. The game rules were seen as too complex and not relatable to the tasks, a sentiment echoed by the teacher who had a hard time running the system. Finally the group generation process which was left in the hands of the students sometimes resulted in no cross-disciplinarity, which resulted in some very low-quality products. In reaction to this feedback, a clear role assignment to the 3^rd years as responsible for groups of 1^st and 2^nd year students, combined with a badge-based and task focused rules system rather than an economic one was elected for this year. Also, groups were now assigned beforehand by the teachers. While this system might seem to restrict the freedom of action for the students, it is believed that the relatively smaller level of complexity will actually increase the feeling of freedom among the students, since the actions they can take in the game are more well-defined which should build up a sense of agency. At the same time, more choice is involved in selecting the problem that needs to be solved this year than in the first iteration, which should increase the sense of free action significantly. Materials Included here are translated versions of the student briefings – that focus on transparency and roles – as well as a copy of the game rules. To illustrate the difference of complexity of the two different iterations, a zip-file is available of the materials from the 2013 iteration, though these have not been translated from the original Danish. For more information, please direct your questions to Game Master and iCamp 46 Designer Anders Vang Pedersen at avpe@videndjurs.dk or project worker Mikkel Lodahl at milo@videndjurs.dk