The Esports in education journey

For the last three years I've been working with esport in education and how to implement esport courses into an existing vocational program. Therefore, from this very beginning, you should be aware of there's (at least) two different ways and mindsets when you bring esport to school and education. As Finland for about 750 years (!) belonged to Sweden, Finland still compete with Sweden and of course, everything that happens in Sweden sooner and later comes to Finland. Therefore, Finnish media nor the federation, could believe the fact we were at the same page with Sweden in the Fall of 2015.

I'm working as a remedial teacher at Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum, which is the only upper secondary vocational institution in the Greater Helsinki area where the language of instruction is Swedish and that offers initial vocational education for young people and adults.

Anyhow, the news of the (school) year 2015 was that you could study esport, just as any other sport, at Arlandagymnasiet in Sweden. No matter if you were a football- handball- or icehockey-player, now you could start learn to be an esport pro at this sports college. Later we understood they got 7 students this first year and in the Spring they had 4 left, they have later been struggling with the in gaming motivation. Also, one important thing to notice. First you have to have good grades, then an esport talent.

That Fall - 2015 - we had another situation: We had the third year's student who misunderstood the meaning of freely elective courses. It was never free-if-you-wanted-courses but courses-you-have-to-choose-freely. I started to wonder, do they have any knowledge or interest that we can make into knowledge and study points?

All said: esports!

What the heck is esports?

In school???

There my esport in education journey started.

I soon teamed up with the school's (traditional) sports coordinator (also national handball coach for youth players) as I soon come to realize students need physical exercise in order to be able to stay focus and handle stress in game.

That esport journey is well documented.

• How were our thoughts when we applied esport into the curriculum? 
• What skills did the industry wanted us to teach?
• How would the course content look like?
• We also make a contract with each player!

The course content was the worst part to make a sketch of as we had no idea. What we roughly sketched up in the Spring of 2016 and what we planned to do the schoolyear 2016-17 sure helped but what the Finnish esports federation (SEUL) really wanted was course contents like this (including scope, objective, content, method and assessment).

As the Finnish vocational curriculum changed 1.1.2018 we also had to change our course. Or actually and more exactly, we - despite Sweden - have a possibility to make an exam part of a vocational education local. Therefore we can offer 20 credits out of 180 about esports. 

The difference between Sweden and Finland is quite simple.

• Sweden have former esports professional coaching students inside mainly two games: CSGO and LOL.
• Finland have teachers, experts in different subjects, teaching life skills needed in esports.

With that said, our course content is suitable for all those who now and in the future plan to work in the field of esports, but it isn’t limited to just playing. Possible professions in the field of esports are for example

• Professional / Semiprofessional player (there's a difference in Finland)
• YouTuber
• Streamer
• Blogger / vlogger 

Even though we now will start to be online ingame, it's not to coach the students in their game - in fact, the choice of game is not important! - but focusing on the personal development of the player. Of course, individual training must be both goal-oriented and significantly more than 5 credits in time, but we think it is realistic to demand 5 credits from the school or the educator to promote the players of tomorrow.

This esport journey finally ended up in the Educator's handbook to esports, which you can find here. Please be aware that as any instruction manual, all three languages (Swedish, English and Finnish) is in the same book! As I assume you want to read the English version of the handbook, scroll down to page 37 something and you'll have the English version.

In the same way as it's a handbook, it's also a textbook to students who wants to learn languages!

Finally, esports as a learning environment. 

Each year we - Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum - host a CSGO tournament: Insomnolence. 

It's an esport event arranged by students who, of course, get supervision of teachers. We have "business clerks" make the event, "hotel receptionists" that welcome the guests, "business information technican" who handle the twitch and matches, "ICT assemblers" doing the network and power supplies and "media assistants" that makes the production that streams out in the world via national TV!

Experiences of activity braclets for eSport students

How do you monitoring eSport students physical exercise? 

We think we've found one way to do this: activity bracelets.

BACKGROUND

During the schoolyear of 2015-2016 we tried to have our eSport students do training diaries. With such a diary we also wanted to have a estimation of how much young people also play competive computergames.

As it was hard to have the students understand why its important we changed it last schoolyear (2016-2017) to make a reflection after each in game session. That report would be a tool for us to help them develop their personal skills but also highlight what is not working (be in ti´me, communication, teamwork and more). 

None of this try out have been working as we want. They (our students) want eSport become a real sport but they don't understand why they have to help us prove it. Not even when we concentrated us on the actual gaming sessions it worked.

ACTIVITY BRACELETS

Suddenly we got funding to use activity bracelets and that money couldn't be used on salary's, instead all should go to motivate the students to exercise! The funding gave us a chance to use gamification on something boring as cardio and walking.

We made the walking to a game, each step was one experience point. At a certain amount of steps you achieved next level (ding!) and shortly this is how our gameplan looked like and you can read more about it here.

RESULT

We thought 10.000 steps a day would be reasonable and therefore a month of 30 days would result in 300.000 steps (xp) and a level to reach (lvl 2, and 20€ ingame cash). We had to put a fairly high level as a STEAM card with the value of 20€ (~23,50 USD) is pretty much for a level.

Even though 300.000 steps is that much (30 days * 10.000 steps) the amount of steps scared our students. We started in December 2016 and in March 2017 we invented a special occasion: attend the Finnish classic Kalevan Kierros but instead of actual skiing or running, our students had to walk the same distance during one day (between 00:00-24:00) and only one challenge a day. So you couldn't do a 30.000 step challenge and also get all the other lower ones done in the same day. 15 kilometer (km) = 15.000 steps one day, 23 km another day, 54 km a third day. In total we wanted them to walk 218 km = 218.000 steps during one month.

This they thought were achievable and they started to walk. 

And walk a lot!

Each row is one student, and half of our students have been used it (and reported their steps).

We also challenged people from the Finnish eSport scene, like different organizations, researchers and the federation to take the challenge. Of those eight, four accepted the challenge and two made it! So before judging our students, this to start exercise is a challenge for the whole eSport world.

THE SCHOOLYEAR 2017-18

Every eSport student will get an activity bracelet as it turns out to be an easy way to monitoring their exercise, their sleep and much more. All they need to do is to wear them and empty their data in a computer.

With the last years experience we will set up a required amount of steps you have to walk to pass the course, maybe 5.000 steps a day. And as we don't have funding to such a generous awards this year we'll set up an own higher goal and those students who achieve that will get a reward (like a 20€ STEAM card).

FEEDBACK

Otto Takala, vice president of Finnish Student Sports Federation (OLL) and vice chairman at the Finnish eSport federation (SEUL) gave us this feedback on our activity bracelet try-out:

"

I like that walking challenge concept. It teaches young people important routines and it also develops control of life. 

In a bigger picture - if we watch into the future - today's biggest challenge is 'how to motivate people to exercise'. And I see this case 'Prakticum eSports' is good pilot for that and one big step towards the future.

"

Healthy me, game on!

To our eSport course we got funding to improve the health among our participants. During the school year 2015-2016 we tried to use season tickets to the swiming hall but it turned out many of the gamers had such a bad self-perception they didn't had the guts to go there. Therefor, with funding, we wanted to try activity bracelets. Would it be possible to make our students aware of the every day exercise and 8 hours sleep if you use such a bracelet?

According to one of our lecturer, Jaana Wessman, the top three things to do outside of the game is (and I quote)

1. Sleep

• regularly
• enough

2. Exercise

• preferably daily
• preferably something requiring spatial navigation (walking/running outside) and/or complex co-ordination (dance, martial arts), or both (trail running, team sports)

3. Minimize unrelated stress

• take care of your family obligations
• take care of your school/work
• have a Plan B

Serious competitive gaming requires leading a disciplined life.

And I end the quote (from slide 25/32) and Jaana's presentation about "Digital games and health" backed up with science can be found from here.

So, activity bracelets?

It turned out not only the eSport industry thought this could be a good idea but also Insmat.fi who gave us a nice price. Suddenly we could afford a reward system, with other words, use gamification on everyday exercise to make our students aim to walk 10,000 steps a day!

The system works as XP in every other game you play, you collect it and when you reach a certain level you ding one level. As the game cards wasn't in any other value than 10€ (LOL) and 20€ (STEAM/Battlenet) the distance is quite far but still realistic. The highest level is 6 and 2.100.000 steps as we'd like our participants to be able to get the rewards before summer. Between January 1st and May 31st it's 151 days, if you aim for 10.000 steps a day you need 150 days to reach 1.500.000 steps and level 5. To reach level 6 you need to walk 14.000 steps a day for the next 150 days and that's really a lot!

Also, if you start with LOL you ding the first and second level before you can change path and choose another game card.

Cheating?

Strange, this is the outsiders biggest concerns but not the participants. Could it be more tempting to an outsider to fool the system? Ask yourself, what would they win with cheating? Another 20€? Is it really worth the risk of 20€ to be known as a cheater in such a small group (20+15 students) and also make the responsible teacher who fight for you and your interest disapointed?

Exercise motivation?
First our students got the activity bracelets and the game was on! It was not only the rewardsystem itself that started to motivate the participants but also the competition; "how far distance have you walked today?"

But when they saw the pictures of the bought game cards, they took a deep breath and whispered: "O h   m y   g o d !"

Yes, now it's not only talking but for real!

The game is on!

Insomnolence16

I start slowly land from our eSport project and the final, March 30th. It has been a fairly stressful project year to be the first school in Finland to test e-Sport in education. Not least because it has felt like walking in a combination of marsh and uphill. Around Christmas Finnish media realized we have started, that you actually can learn e-Sport in school in Finland from the fall of 2015!

We have circulated in both Finnishswedish as in Finnish media; newspaper articles, radio programs and national television. We have started to collaborate with three Finnish e-Sport organizations, a PhD Student at Helsinki University (Game education research), The Finnish e-Sport federation (SEUL) and there is also a master thesis coming up on the health aspects connected to our e-Sport project.

We have been on a field trip to Sweden and Arlandagymnasiet, an upper secondary sport school where they also started e-Sport last fall. It was both interesting and educational, and we realized two things: 

• we're on the right track
• we've managed our first year better

Both Sweden (and upcoming Norway) uses the sports curriculum while we use a vocational curriculum. Contrary to our neighboring countries, our students actually not game in school, they do it in the evenings and home (as they anyway do it) and then it is counted as school days.

We also have all participants to sign written contracts, they are not legally binding, but we want both parties (the school and the students) agree on a contract. All experience so far has also been written down.

Like any construction project that takes the first sod to fundamentally we have done the same. Though instead of a shovel, we have used a Minecraft pickaxe and all collaboration partners we have come across has signed it!

In January 2016 we thought it would be cool to arrange a CS:GO school tournament (Insomnolence16) and when asking we should have at least 30 teams. Turned out we got seven and have to open it up to other Finnishswedish upper secondary schools as well. Then we got 12 teams. All groupstages would be played in evenings from home but the final, would be played daytime in school on stage. As we wanted this event to be a happening we also invited lectures, other educator's (schools) and parents. To document this, we thought we could take advantage of our media assistant education. Suddenly national television was eager to stream the occasion and our media students found themselves in the position to make national TV... 

Lot's of education connected to a gaming project, that's for sure!

We got caster's from the Finnish e-Sport stage, actually the same guy who usually cast in national TV (Teemu "wabbit" Hiilinen) together with a former female e-sport pro, Jenny "NapuliX" Kåla. Except the national TV stream we also had their TV show "Sportmagasinet" making a reportage about our project and the final. If you download the app (outside Finland) you would be able to see the show and e-Sport starts after approx 19 min.

With such a limited time (53 schooldays all in all) our students truly made a masterpiece. But to next year we need to start to plan right now.

I'm alive! but a bit stressed...

Hi PLN,

I feel a bit bad for not blog that much at the moment, believe me; I have loads that need to come out.

It turned out last fall our students needed help with lots of missing course points, that they somehow havn't taken or havn't been offering. To put together an aid kit of 200 lessons just like that takes energy.

Because I'm the Minecraft teacher I see a lot of benefits with gaming, I teamed up with our sports coordinator (old guy 55+ with a son who played way too much videogames). And together we're trying e-Sport in education.

Or actually, together with Team Menace, ENCE eSports, 100k eSports and SEUL we're building Finnish e-Sport in education! 

It turned out we're the first school in the country to use e-Sport in education! As we also do the "sharing is caring" we're a major hit in the national news. But time? I have really no time to blog about it.

My colleague by the way is an impressive guy, he's the national handball coach for the guys born 1998. He has also started a one of the kind possibility for our top athletics: combine your sport with a vocational degree (google translate works!) Now he/we have students training for the Olympics.

He also convinced me, we should start an e-Sport school tournament! Yeps, so now we're in the middle of that one. But as it's lots of learning possibilities with that, it will be arranged by students and so far we have been able to connect the tournament to four different courses!

As there is so much learning involved when you are about to arrange a tournament we want the students to do as much work as possible. We now have them collaborating with four other students groups/educations. 

Business Information Technican (Swedish: datanom)

These are the students we test the e-Sport concept with, they also arrange the tournament. They also take care of all the matches and the servers.

Electrician (Swedish: elmontör)

We'd need a lot of power to do this!

Business and Administration Clerk (Swedish: merkonom)

Product demonstration of sponsors goods and maybe selling collaboration partner's merchandise.

Media Assistant (Swedish: medie-assistent)

We wanted them to do a "TV-production" of the event. Turned out the national TV is very interested to stream it out via their channels...

Waiter/Waitress (Swedish: servitör)

Will take care of all guests and also our players!

Today we also started to think what if we could get another education envolved

Practical Nurses (Swedish: närvårdare)

As e-Sport more and more turn out to be a wellbeing project, what if we could have some information about nutrition and why not a first aid group?

How do we connect e-Sport in education? 

Well, besides having them in gym every week we also can use the magic of e-Sport and teach different subjects which they otherwise wouldn't be that interested in. They have all installed servers in virtual box but not for real. Last week one great learning opportunity came across.

Our students asked what if the rented server goes down? 

what if the ping isn't good enough in the final? 

Would it be possible to set up one own? 

I replied, why don't you list what's needed and ask my colleague in the lab? 

Turned out we didn't had the parts, but my foreman gave us a go to invest in one because we anyway need one, but only if the students could pick the parts and also explain WHY and WHAT benefits we would have of that server except as a game server.

They started with that task and managed it well. The server parts was ordered and yesterday the rented server actually went down in the middle of one match. But our serverparts came this morning so our students have been sitting on overtime (my lessons stopped 14:45 and they ran home at 17:15) trying to config the server. I'm very impressed and very proud of them!

Just when today's matches should start our own server went down and the rented server got up... So they are highly motivated to come back to school tomorrow and fix the server! And also document the process, as they were too stressed to remember that today :D

Documentation
Here you can find our experiences so far about e-Sport in education.

eSport and education

Since September I've been working with a new project: e-Sport (in education). 

Instead of forbid gaming, what if we take advantage of our student’s interest?

e-Sport happens to be the news of the year in Swedish schools this autumn, where sports college and national sports schools in the same way as they train football players, hockey players and so on also now has the focus e-Sport.

In the Finnish vocational school and our curriculum, we can’t ourselves replace a qualification module toward something we want just like that. However we have a small part free courses which students themselves choose, where we can offer studies in e-Sport. To be able to do this, as those free courses also should strengthen professional skills, we have to ask ourselves: What do you learn in a game that would be important skills in both classrooms as in working life?

Now I happen to have one course, this mission, right now, to teach the students to define, plan and document problems. It seems this is very hard and they also give up in an early stage. But, surprisingly, they do exact the same thing when they play a computer game, but in the game they refuse to give up! Why?

For example

At Sunday evening, your team will have an important CS:GO match and it turns out you will play a new custom made map. How do you solve the problem? 

You have a problem, a new map. You search every possible forum of any threads or clues until you get the map. If possible you install it on a local server and you gather your team, you play and explore, you evaluate the teams experience. Maybe you even write down your thoughts and game plan.

This is exactly what we want them to do in the classroom.

What if we confirm this skill in a safe environment? 

Would they be able to take that skill out in the classroom and to working life?

I don't know.

It's worth a try.

And we - Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum - happen to be first! No one has thought about this opportunity before us!

We have put together a mind map, things we believe you would be able to learn through games and e-Sports. All we have to do: stop see problems, start to see possibilities! It sounds easier than it is. Again, the feedback we get from this mind map confirms that we are thinking in a whole new way!

We started this as a learning project within the field of our Datanom (Business Information Technician) education in Porvoo (Borgå) but it quickly changed to something complete different:

A wellness project!!!

SESF, SEUL and Team Menace are all experts we started discussions and collaborations with and they all emphasizing the importance of well-being and physical health: fixed routines, structure of everyday life, diet, sleep and exercise is at least as important as in any other sport.

Teijo Sepponen, CEO of Team Menace gave us this most valuable feedback:

We now have 23 students in this project, people from four different classes. We have one CS:GO team and two teams of LOL (League of Legends). They practice and play matches from home and they get theory and exercise with a personal trainer in school. Both activities generate study points. Everything they do within the project they put in a notebook, a training diary. These three e-Sport teams are also our school teams on equal terms as all other school sport Team Prakticum compete in.

We do have some challenges and it's not strange since we started this directly without directly planning, but with an idea that we learn by doing. We, the two teachers involved (the school's athletic coordinator and I) have also had fully booked calendars with no extra time to start the theory lessons or workout with a personal trainer. As in any other school athletic teams you have both less and more experienced players, add the fact many of these students never been in a team and therefor don't know about team spirit.

For example: 

What it means to be in the school team? Yeah that although you do not have the desire to train, you must still come. 

Today I talked with the third graders (last year students) and they do handle way more than I thought or anyone has thought. They have also taken on the role as educators, to help or explain the younger students. To be able to achieve this normally you have to promote some students as a tutor, here it happened automatically. It does happen a lot between 15-16 years old and 18-21. 

A couple of weeks ago I talked with one Finnish CEO, what kind of skills he want us (Vocational institutes) raise, create and produce. He had a wishing list like this:

One wish is that we train our students so that a worker has not only rights but also obligations. 

This is actually straight from the above example of what to do when you’re in the school team.

He wants to hire positive team players who can think for themselves, they must be deployable, flexible and loyal. Furthermore understand that the big picture is important and that one can take in and do almost anything. Just because one is employed to program, you might sometimes need to stand on the factory floor. 

This is interesting, because it’s just what happens in a game and e-Sport. Without listed skills above you won’t make it in game. When you get two players out in an ice hockey match, you’re dead. When you get two players out in e-Sport you know you still have a fair chance to win. With two tanks dead in game, the rest of the team change roles to master the new situation.

Again.

What if we confirm this skill in a safe environment? 

Would they be able to take that skill out in the classroom and to working life?

I don't know.

It's worth a try.

We have received funding for this year. We now have the opportunity to put our plans into reality. Our players have got (1) a discount card to the city's swimming pool, along (2) with a personal trainer they shall start training at the gym once a week (and (3) get breakfast afterwards) and we’ll also (4) dress them up as a team. Furthermore hire interesting (5) lecturer, hopefully (6) send them to Assembly (with no stress of winning, instead having fun!)

We also like to plant some ideas of sports psychology, goal setting and goal monitoring and team spirit. 

• What else do you suggest? 
• Do we miss something important? 
• What have we not thought of?