Can that be online gaming?

Count me among the skeptics when it comes to online gaming. You lack dynamics, players do not see each other and you as a game leader do not see what players are doing. But after three sessions with students from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, I am a lot more positive. With a good mix of game platform and online communication, participants ' learning experiences in the digital version do not differ significantly from those in the physical version.

In the workshop we put participants to work in Control-it, a classic service management game, but in an online game environment.

The communication between the participants takes place via a videoconferencing tool. Ideal for games are wonder or glowbl. In these tools, you walk, as it were, to another “table”. In the session of The Hague University of Applied Sciences, we used Teams as the central audio channel and Discord for the chats.

My fear that you would miss everything as a game leader did not come true. Yes, you miss the body language, but you get a lot of new information. Through the game environment you hop from table to table and you can see what is happening in the game environment. In Teams, you can hear what participants are saying. And in Discord, you can read what participants are messaging each other. An absolute eye-opener.