Inspiring students when school is closed: Game Design Club for middle school

In Michigan our students will be out of school from March 13 through the end of summer. In an effort to inspire students to create and learn during this time, I revisited my idea of running a virtual game design club. Here's how I've started and a little about what I've learned.

I have big plans for the club, including:

• A short series of tips for being a game designer.
• Interviews through Google Meet with my friends who have made games.
• Helping students publish their games online, whether they make digital or non-digital games.
• Sharing everything we learn here on the blog, so students know there's a platform for the work we're doing.

First, I made a survey in Google Forms to check for interest. I asked our middle school teachers (grades 5 - 8) to post the survey in their Google Classrooms. The survey asked students about their favorite games, what types of games they'd like to make and what they hoped to get out of the club. In our school of about 360 students, I had 30 complete the survey. Most of those students were in grades 5 and 7. That's not many, but it was enough to get started.

I then created a class in Google Classroom. That's where we're managing all the classes at our secondary level. I invited the students who took the survey and I posted the introductory video below. I had a few goals with the video:

• I wanted to let students know the club is meant to encourage them to create rather than just consume entertainment.
• Of course a lot of the students are focused on making computer games. I normally design only board and card games. Programming can take a long time and be a challenge. I anticipate those being even more difficult obstacles as we work remotely. So I used this video to point out the huge number of games many people haven't discovered yet.
• I wanted to pose the "big question":  Do they want to make games badly enough to do the work required.

I made this video quickly, just talking as a clicked through a Google Slides presentation. (I started upping my game quickly for videos that I'll share soon.)

After watching the video, students were asked to complete another short Google Form. I asked the "big question" I referred to in the video. I also checked on their interest about making computer games versus board and card games.

Here are some things I've learned so far from this:

• As we knew already, it is a challenge to encourage engagement when grades and credit are removed from the equation. That's what they're used to and now the rules have changed. The open ended questions I asked were sometimes answered with just a word or short phrase. That's not uncommon even during normal school, but I expected a little more enthusiasm for the topic of games and game design. Some of them did answer with thought and excitement behind it, of course.
• Making engaging content is good practice for me. I hope to learn some tricks that helps me encourage the teachers I work with. It takes time and I wonder if what I'm putting into this club idea (not required for my job in any way) is sustainable. I completed the next video (which I'll write about in my next blog post). It was half as long and it took me probably four times longer to create.
• Students are open to creating simple board and card games, but most interest still is leaning toward computer games. I'm hopeful I can keep their attention on non-digital games, since I think those are faster to go from idea to playable game (at least before one knows how to program). I'm hoping that faster cycle will keep them excited enough to continue learning.

Up next, we'll look at my first tip for aspiring game designers. If you're interested in following along with this, please let me know in the comments or by email. Follow me on Twitter for updates too.