Making Games in Collaboration for Learning: final project report

Abstract

This report presents the outcomes of a multilateral European project called Making Games in Collaboration for Learning (MAGICAL), which was co-funded under the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme (KA3). The project set out to investigate the viability and added value of Collaborative Digital Game Making (CDGM) for learning, especially for supporting learners’ transversal skills such as collaboration, creativity, problem solving and ICT literacy. MAGICAL partners see CDGM as an innovative, student-centred form of ‘learning by doing’ that takes the established advantages of Game-Based Learning a step further into territory beyond game-play. It challenges teams of young learners to collaborate in the design and creation of their own digital games - games that they produce for each other, for their community of schoolmates, friends and family, and for their wider networks. MAGICAL’s investigation of CDGM’s potential for enhancing learning processes is accompanied by an explicit mission to support evidence-based propagation of that potential in teacher education, practitioner training, and in classroom practice, especially in primary and lower secondary schools. As a European initiative, the project brought together partners from Belgium, Finland, Italy and the UK. The project unfolded over a 33-month period that concluded on 1 October, 2014. The final report describes MAGICAL’s objectives and the approach that the consortium has adopted to pursue them. It gives an account of how project activities unfolded and of the research results and outputs that were generated in the process. In addition, the report describes how MAGICAL is positioned in relation to stakeholders and the education community generally, with a view towards dissemination and exploitation of project results. The report also looks briefly at the plans and prospects for furthering CDGM and for consolidating MAGICAL’s contribution to that effort, especially in terms of EU policy.