Just what is a game jam? It is a short event, usually only a day or two, where game developers plan, design and create a short game. Similar to a music jam session, game jams don’t involve much pre-planning and rely on immediate idea generation and improvisation. Game design companies have these jam sessions regularly, and while many of the games that happen here are digital, some are paper-based. They usually occur in one physical location to allow for immediate, organic collaboration. While there is an element of competition, most of the work is focused on collaboration towards a common goal.

I have witnessed some of these game jams, and have talked with many gaming experts to learn more about it. I wanted to learn more about game jams to help me come up with ideas for how we might include an activity like this in classroom instruction.

The following video will help you visualize how the process works:

I see a lot of great opportunity to teach and assess 21st century skills, focus on deeper learning, and present content. Here are steps and tips to get you started:

1. Create a Flexible Space
If you watch the video above, you will see the room change — literally. The room is set up in a way that allows for presentation, small group work, space for making and more. Make sure you have the space or can create a space that is fluid and can easy be transformed to meet the needs of the teams and the steps in the game jam process.

2. Provide Digital or Physical Tools
As teams create and decide upon their games, they will need materials to do so. However, don’t assume that a game jam is only about creating digital games. While jammers might use a digital tool like Gamestar Mechanic to create their game, they might also use physical materials like paper, glue, magazines and scissors. Have these materials available, and provide voice and choice for students to pick what materials will best meet their needs. At a GameDesk game jam, a team developed a pizza game that was aligned to math content about fractions. This game was created with physical, not digital, materials.

3. Embrace Principles of Games Design
A game jam is a great opportunity to teach fundamentals of game design, from story line and narrative to the actual mechanics. Normally, participants in game jams come to it with a lot of prior knowledge, although many game jam teams have members with very little knowledge of these mechanics. The extent to which you teach this might depend on the level of students or time constraints in the classroom. However, since the game jam is in essence a design challenge, you can align to principles of STEM or STEAM education. Make sure to give students designated time before the game jam to learn these principles.

4. Domain Analysis
This is probably one of the most interesting steps of the game jam. Here, the teams investigate specific content areas (or domains) and uncover how the content is both taught and represented. For example, teams can find specific learning targets in their game content, and also note how those targets are represented visually or digitally. They research how the content is traditionally taught and also assessed. Teams craft specific learning targets from this exploration and research to ensure that, when they get to the idea phase, they can create a focused game targeting very specific learning objectives.

5. Team Building
Game jams always start with team builders. In a real game jam, the team members have often never worked together before; therefore, it’s crucial to set a tone for collaboration and problem solving. It’s the same for our students. In order to set them up for success, icebreakers and other team builders need to occur.

6. Ideation
After bonding as a team and analyzing content domains, the ideation phase begins. This is where teams brainstorm and collaborate on ideas for the game itself. Relying on its collective knowledge of game design and content, the team starts to craft ideas for a game that will target a specific learning objective. These objectives are tight, and there are often not too many of them. They are created in the Domain Analysis component (step 4 above), but here the team gets to start narrowing and picking these targets as well as decide on the mechanics.

7. Deadlines and Benchmarks
The game jam itself has a very specific deadline, usually a full day (eight hours) of work, including the presentations and pitches. However within the game jam day, there are further benchmarks. For example, at some point during the day, teams are no longer allowed to generate game ideas and are forced to work or “make.” This helps create the urgency for the deadline and also helps to move along the process. Consider setting specific time limits for some of the steps in the game jam.

8. Presentation, Playing and Judging
The culminating event for the game jam is presenting the game product and having all participants play the game. Not only is this an important assessment, but it is also an important way to celebrate the jammers’ hard work. Judges need to have specific criteria for evaluating the games. These criteria might be different for every game jam. They might include relevance to content or curriculum, marketability, player interest, ability to collaborate, and more.

As you consider a game jam for your classroom, you might focus the assessment on the content area, or simply on 21st century skills like creativity and collaboration. I know many of us have more freedom after “testing season,” so that also might be a great time to give this idea a shot. Just make sure you’re clear on the learning objectives and project outcomes that you expect from your students. Don’t forget to watch the game jammers in action in the time-lapse video above to give you a full picture of what it would look like!

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As I travel and work with teachers to improve practice and increase student achievement, classroom management is often a topic we focus on in professional development. Whether managing a 1:1 classroom or understanding how a teacher manages a PBL project, teachers are always looking for best practices in how to make sure the classroom is managed effectively.

This topic is also coupled with the idea of engagement. We know that if we are engaging our students, then management issues are alleviated or disappear all together. Whenever I work with teachers I also make this statement:

“What is the best tool for management? Engaging curriculum and instruction!”

However, I’ve come to understand that the term “engagement” needs to be unpacked before addressing issues of management in the classroom. If you ask an educator, “What does engagement look like?” responses will surely vary. I remember when I first started teaching, and preparing for a classroom visit by my principal or supervising administrator. I always wanted to make sure the room was quiet in general, there were no outbursts and that students were silently working on their assignments at their tables. Now I realize these are not quality indicators of engagement. They are quality indicators of compliance, which is different.

Daniel Pink makes an significant quite in his video (and book) Drive, although his context is focus on the workplace. “Management is good if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-directed is better.” Here Pink reframes the whole conversation on what it means to be productive, contribute to a goal and do work.

I don’t want just compliance for my students. I want engagement. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose are three ideas (borrowed from Pink) that can move our classrooms to focus on engagement, rather than on compliance. When we do, classroom management becomes a conversation about strategies to support learners, rather than a way to make them “follow the rules” in a one-size-fits-all model. Let’s reframe the conversation on classroom management, and instead focus on engagement first!

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Project-based learning can provide an intentional and effective opportunity to integrate the arts across disciplines and curriculum. While valuable as a stand-alone discipline, arts education can be given further power and value when used in a PBL project as part of the core curriculum.

When teachers begin designing PBL projects, they often start small, maybe with a recommended idea to internalize the design process and a reflection on how to improve. As teachers become more familiar with PBL, integration is a great next step for taking it up a notch. This is where the arts come in! If you are thinking about your next PBL project, consider using one or more of these intentional moments to integrate art.

The Arts as the Entry Event
When launching a PBL project, it is crucial to have an entry event that engages students and creates excitement for the project. From movies and music to activities and simulations, teachers can launch a project with one or more entry events that relate to the arts. Start the project with an art anchor text, not only to build inquiry, but also to keep the momentum going along the way by revisiting that anchor.

The Arts in Culminating Products or Performances
PBL demands voice and choice in how students spend their time and how they show their learning. Each project culminates in a presentation or product that is presented to a public audience. The best products meet the needs of the audience, which means that creating the project must focus not only on relevance, but also on engagement. Teachers can use this design element to further leverage the arts by providing an arts product as one or more of the choices. We know students can show their learning in a variety of ways and through multiple intelligences. In addition to a persuasive letter, consider a collage or songbook of lyrics.

The Arts as Scaffolding
Students need scaffolding through a variety of instructional activities that will arm them with the skills and content they’ll need to be successful on the project. As you consider this scaffolding, include arts-related activities. Use these activities to help students process their content and represent their thinking. For example, have students do a “tableau” activity where they represent the structure of the cell. From this, the teacher helps students metacognitively and transparently connect this individual activity to the larger project. Students learn from this arts-based activity during the project and will apply it to their product. Role-plays, simulations, music comprehension strategies, visual processing, dramatic acting — all these activities and more can help support and scaffold the many learning targets within a PBL project.

The Arts As Formative Assessment
Similar to assessing their students’ culminating products or performances, teachers must formatively assess learning objectives and skills throughout the PBL project. As students participate in scaffolding and activities, use the arts as the method to formatively assess content and 21st century skills. If you are assessing collaboration, use a visual representation as evidence.

While arts integration in the core discipline alone is valuable, doing it within the context of a PBL project can make the integration seamless as well as valuable. PBL projects provide a space to meet multiple learning targets, whether those are core discipline standards or arts standards. Whether or not you are intending to assess arts standards on your PBL project, you can still find intentional instructional moments for using the arts, not only to value them, but also to create engagement for everyone. Your students can learn the arts as well as learning through the arts.

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