The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) is proud to welcome the 10th edition of the international Serious Play conference, which is being held in Canada for the first time. The event will bring together a variety of experts in the field of serious play and gamification, or the use of games in learning situations.
For previous editions, such prestigious American universities as Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, George Mason in Washington and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles have hosted the Serious Play conference.
The Montreal conference will be launched by UQAM rector Magda Fusaro, who believes that "it is possible to establish the link between technology and education. We will prove that games, whether entertaining or serious, have positive impacts and that thay can help society by exerting a beneficial influence in the most varied and surprising fields."
According to the event coordinator, Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin, a professor at the UQAM Media School, the boundaries between serious and non-serious games are blurring. Teachers increasingly are using entertainment games like Minecraft and Civilization to teach subjects such as mathematics and history. More and more, businesses and the health sector are using simulation games and gamification to train their employees and increase their productivity. The penchant for using games as an educational tool has increased dramatically.
Globally, the five-year compound annual growth rate of gaming-related products and services is 37.1%, and industry revenues can be expected to quadruple by 2023 to more than 17 billion dollars, according to a 2018 report from the market research firm Metaari.
Keynote Address
The keynote address, "Minecraft's Role in Raising a Generation of Good Gamers", will be given by Katie Salen, professor at the University of California Irvine, co-founder of Connected Camps, and co-author of the respected books Rules of Play, The Game Design Reader, and Quest to Learn, all published by MIT Press. She will explore the role that the game Minecraft could play in childhood learning as a proactive way to resolve conflicts and tackle the problem of the toxicity found in some online environments.
Presentations by UQAM professors and students
Maude Bonenfant, a professor in the Social and Public Communication Department, and her research team will present their study on the gamified classroom-management platform Classcraft.
Anaëlle Gravier, a Master's student in Communication - Video Games and Gamification, will present her research on co-operative video games that foster engagement and communication in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Jonathan Bonneau, a professor at the UQAM Media School, will give a lecture on " Learning through LARPing: Interviews and Biometrics".
Julien Mercier, a professor in the Department of Specialized Education and Training, will ask "What about Detecting Affective and Cognitive Correlates of Learning as They Occur?".
Dates: July 10 to 12, 2019
Place: Pierre-Dansereau Science Complex in the Président-Kennedy Pavilion (PK) (201 President-Kennedy Avenue), Place-des-Arts metro station.
Panel organized by Ubisoft
Title: "Beyond Gaming: Meaningful Collaboration Can Have a Big Impact. How you can use the potential of video games to bring your project to another level"
Date: July 10 at 4:45 pm
Place: Hydro-Québec Agora
"This panel presented by Ubisoft will explore two projects that illustrate the full potential of collaborations between different sectors," explains Francis Baillet, Vice-President, Corporate Affairs at Ubisoft. "It will show how we collaborate with content experts and university researchers to more effectively develop learning experiences and leverage our video game expertise beyond our industry."
About Serious Play
Presented in partnership with Adtalem Global Education, Ubisoft, the research group Homo Ludens (UQAM), the Media School (UQAM), the Faculty of Communications (UQAM), the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology (McGill), the Games and Gamification Working Group (McGill), Technoculture, Art and Games (Concordia), École NAD and the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics (UQAC), the Serious Play Montreal conference will offer participants nearly one hundred presentations in English over a three-day period, a variety of interactive workshops and two landmark sessions on serious and non-serious games. The event will end with an afternoon of games at the Hydro-Québec Agora where the winners of the International Serious Play Competition will be announced.
For tickets and the full program of the event, please visit the conference website: www.seriousplay-montreal.com.
To follow the conference on Twitter: #SeriousPlayMTLUQAM
