Co-Creating Educational Project Management Board Games to Enhance Student Engagement

Management education scholarship has long outlined the need to enhance student engagement and participation in business schools, using more innovative teaching practices. This is increasingly motivating scholars to strive for more collaborative pedagogic dynamics between teachers and students. At the same time, research into co-creation of Game Based Learning material such as board games has largely focused on the value added to games when educators involve students in the design process. However there has been scant research examining the qualities of co-creational game design exercises as teaching experiences themselves, thus overlooking the opportunity to conceptualise such activities as an innovative teaching tool that can help educators facilitate student engagement and participation. To address this research gap, this paper presents a case study where Project Management students participated in two co-creation workshops designing educational Project Management games. Data were collected conducting focus groups at the end of the two workshops. Throughout the paper we have sought to present some positive outcomes of such processes as well as some critical points that emerged through the data that were collected. Mentionable outcomes include a series of positive characteristics of co-creative Game Based Learning activities like enhanced engagement as well as a list of challenges when facilitating such activities. The main findings of this research have been organised in two frameworks, one outlining five positive characteristics of co-creative Game Based Learning activities: engagement with knowledge, knowledge assessment, creativity, communication and the second outlining challenges in facilitating such activities: lack of focus, lack of structure and the need for more practice-oriented games. The suggested frameworks can assist educators conceptualise and utilise such exercises to create more effective and participatory learning environments.