Academics from Keele University have recently showcased their suite of educational games at the Playful Learning Conference 2019.

The Playful Learning Conference, which took place at the University of Leicester, is pitched at the intersection of learning and play for adults, providing a space where teachers, researchers and students can play, learn and think together, and be inspired by talks workshops, activities and events.

Dr Russell Crawford, Academic Developer within the Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (KIITE) and Dr Sarah Aynsley, Senior Teaching Fellow in Keele School of Medicine, were invited to showcase their Braincept games, with delegates encouraged to take part in a game.

Braincept is a growing suite of educational games covering pharmacology, interprofessional education, deductive reasoning, communication and listening skills.

Russell commented:

Gamification in an educational context has been shown to be a valuable tool to learners and educators in a diverse range of environments both inside and outside higher education. We were delighted to present our work at the Playful Learning Conference, and particularly enjoyed some seriously creative narrative-driven group discussions which arose whilst playing our communication and listening skills game, ‘Oracle’.

Sarah explained:

As we were part of the conference activities, rather than a presentation, we were able to set up the games in the centre of the event and talk to colleagues and collaborators all day long, rather than in one of the parallel sessions. We had some really intense engagement with our ‘People and Places’ interprofessional education game, and also had some interesting dialogue with The Universities of Surrey and De Montfort, who were interested not only in the games themselves, but also in exploring the co-creation of new games and researching the learning gains that Braincept’s approach can offer.

For more information about Braincept and/or games in education, contact: r.crawford@keele.ac.uk and s.aynsley@keele.ac.uk