Learn By Play
What is Learn By Play ?
Learn By Play is a school assistance project in which we try to make the children in Evry with difficulties at school enjoy learning again. To accomplish that, we used already existing educational games as well as creating our own to best adapt to our needs.
Project timeline (2018-2019):
· October: Games and establishement research phase.
· Nov-Dec: Feedback from establishements, created games and designed the sessions.
· Jan-May: Conducted the sessions.
· June: Feedback from the teachers and the students.
Our accomplishements
· A team of 9 students
· Intervened in 1 primary school and 3 neighbourhood houses.
· Animated 28 sessions over 5 months, representing 40 hours of animation.
· Used 32 educational games in Math, History, Geography and French.
· Including 17 games made by us.
Designing the games
Intervening in schools meant our games and activities had to fit in with the school program, so only using existing games wasn't possible. We made games for children of all ages in primary school. Having a significant number of different games was also important to keep the children's attention, so in addition to creating games, we modified existing ones to be better suited to our educational purposes. For example, we transformed the card game Munchkin into a cooperation adding game. While creating the games we regularly exchanged with our school's game design club CELL for feedback and tips on designing serious games and gamification.
Reconducting the project
Learn By Play was originally created in 2018 by the cofounders of CELL, Télécom SudParis's game design club, and served as a engineering 1st year project. Its success leaded me to reconduct it the following year as the new president of the CELL club. Learn By Play still is an ongoing project with a new team of students every year. It has even managed to pursue its activites by going online during lockdown.