NetWerkTafel Serious Gaming a success

Tuesday 19 January 2010 SURFfoundation organised in collaboration with CELSTEC and the SIG Serious Gaming a ‘network table’. Representatives from education and industry explored the possibilities for further development of methods, tools and examples in the field of serious gaming, taking CELSTEC's EMERGO as point of departure.

Future of gaming
Serious Gaming offers interesting opportunites for education. The EMERGO project (co-financed by SURF Foundation) developed a method and a toolkit for the development and implementation of e-cases in education. The meeting took the results of EMERGO as point of departure, but included other developments, needs and possibilities in the field of serious gaming into the discussion.
CELSTEC was represented by Rob Nadolski, Hans Hummel and Aad Slootmaker. They gave a demo and a presentation on EMERGO. Ansje Löhr of the faculty of Natural Sciences of the Open Universiteit also participated in the meeting. She coördinated the development of a case on watermanagement using EMERGO.

The aim of the NetWerkTafel was:

• to take stock of the needs and possibilities for further development of methods, tools and examples in the field of serious gaming;
• to prioritize;
• to specify in general terms how collaboration could be organized and what could be joint activities;
• to decide on the role of SURFfoundation, the SIG community and CELSTEC in the coming period.

Collaboration education and industry
The meeting made clear that collaboration between higher education and gaming industry is advisable and offers opportunities. The role for education is mainly to develop didactics and demand, taking into account validation, division of roles and business models.

NetWerkTafel
The SURF, the organizor of the meeting, organises NetWerkTafels (network tables) to bring a group of persons together to work informally and intensively on a topical subject. The meeting takes an afternoon followed by a drink and a dinner. A NetWerkTafel is more than a workshop: it’s also a meeting place for professionals from the field to exchange knowledge and experiences.