Run your own Board Game Jam
A Game Jam is an organised event where a group of people gather with the intention of creating a full game – from conception to completion – in a pre-determined, short period of time.
In the OER Game Jams, we lead groups through creating, licensing, and sharing a game as an Open Educational Resource (OER). This hands-on workshop, created by Stephanie (Charlie) Farley and Gavin Willshaw of Information Services, is available to be run in multiple formats. The Game Jam can be run for pen and paper, print and play, board game creation, and/or developing digital skills with an online adventure story game (new!).
The workshop guides groups through all the steps to create their own board game. It explores prototyping and play-testing and how to add variety and fun by employing different game mechanics.
Games in our workshops are created using digitised images from the University of Edinburgh Library, open media content from Media Hopper, and openly licensed and public domain images and digital resources across the web.
Our workshop covers:
- the differences between copyright and licensing,
- how to identify licensed material that is free for re-use,
- how to licence your own work.
The beauty of an OER is that you can adapt and modify the format and purpose of a Game Jam to suit the needs of your own session.
We have run OER Game Jam sessions for:
- The LTW Division away day
- Peer Support Learning student volunteers
- The PG Design Informatics class of 2016/17
- The online learning cohort for our Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice
- The eLearning@ed forum (a forum for teaching and support staff with interest in electronic learning technologies)
- The Future Teacher series
- The Festival of Creative Learning 2016 and 2017
- The Open Education Resources ALT conference in London 2017.
If you would like an OER Game Jam session to be run for your School, Department, or course, please contact Stephanie (Charlie) Farley.
Run your own Board Game Jam
The documents used from our sessions have been openly licensed and are available to be used to create your own Jam. The beauty of an OER is that you can adapt and modify the format and purpose of our documents to create a Jam to suit your own needs.
Lead a group through the creating, licensing, and sharing of a board game as an Open Educational Resource (OER) with this hands-on workshop in multiple formats, created by Stephanie (Charlie) Farley and Gavin Willshaw of Information Services.
Originally created for the University’s Innovative Learning Week in 2016, Board Game Jam has been re-purposed and presented as a one day, half-day, and one hour(!) workshop.
The workshop guides groups through all the steps to create their own board game. It explores prototyping and play-testing and how to add variety and fun by employing different game mechanics.
Games in our workshops are created using digitised images from the University of Edinburgh Library, but images can be sourced elsewhere on the web.
Our workshop covers:
- the differences between copyright and licensing,
- how to identify licensed material that is free for re-use,
- how to licence your own work.
The following documents have been openly licensed and are available to be used to create your own Jam. The beauty of an OER is that you can adapt and modify the format and purpose of a Jam to suit the needs of your own session.
Board Game Jam documents
Games by Students – ILW 2016
Games by Staff and Students – 2016
Games by Design Informatics students 2016
Board Game Expansion, Festival of Creative Learning 2017
This work by Stephanie (Charlie) Farley and Gavin Willshaw of the The University of Edinburgh are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence 4.0
Image: Assorted die, counters, and markers. Photograph by Gavin Willshaw. Creative Commons Attribution licence 4.0
