Research New research project "Game-SI" links gamification with the promotion of social innovations

On November 1, 2024, the BMBF-funded project "Game-SI" started at ASH Berlin under the direction of Prof. Dr. Uwe Bettig

The four-person team of the "Game-SI" research project is standing in a room, two people are holding oversized dice.
The Game-SI project team at a joint meeting in Bremen, the headquarters of the network partner. From left to right: Fabian Oestreicher (Project Management Hilfswerft gGmbH), Prof. Dr. Uwe Bettig (Project Management ASH Berlin), Melanie Akerboom (WiMi ASH Berlin), Kevin Heinrich (Hilfswerft gGmbH). Not in the picture but also in the team: Johanna Ernst (Hilfswerft gGmbH) and Kirsten Kahlhaw (WiMi ASH Berlin). Hilfswerft

On November 1, 2024, the new "Game-SI" project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), was launched at Alice Salomon University Berlin under the direction of Prof. Dr. Uwe Bettig (Faculty II). The acronym "Game-SI" stands for "Gamified Methods and Competence Development for Application-oriented Social Innovations". It is a joint research project with Hilfswerft gGmbH from Bremen.

The "Game-SI" joint project is scheduled to run for 15 months. It aims to promote the development and implementation of social innovations in the traditional fields of social and health care. The use of gamified methods (such as mini-games) is intended to create low-threshold points of contact with the topic of social innovation and at the same time create initial experiences of self-efficacy among students and professionals from the social and healthcare sectors.

The future four-person project team at ASH Berlin, consisting of Prof. Dr. Uwe Bettig (project manager), Melanie Akerboom (research assistant), Kirsten Kohlhaw (research assistant) and a student assistant (note: the SHK position is currently advertised here) will ensure, among other things, a scientific review of the approaches and competence model ("WIRKskills") developed by Hilfswerft gGmbH to promote social innovators. Furthermore, the research design for the evaluation of competence identification and the learning effects of the participants in the mini-games is being developed. The project will test whether the use of gamification can influence self-identification as a potential social innovator (or initiator) and increase interest in the development of social innovations in the social and healthcare sectors.

The partners are currently still in the individual preliminary work and preparations. The games to be developed are to be tested as a prototype both in the coming summer semester 2025 (between April and May) and a second time in the winter semester 2025/26 with students from the healthcare sector. Interested students will then have the opportunity to take part in a free workshop lasting several days to expand their knowledge of social innovation and discover their own scope for creativity.
The whole thing is made possible by the DATIpilot funding guideline published by the BMBF in July 2023. Almost 600 of the around 3,000 outlines submitted proved to be of particularly high quality and generally worthy of funding during the technical review, including the outline submitted by ASH Berlin for the "Game-SI" project. A total of 300 innovation sprints are being funded across Germany. Around 20 percent of the projects involve social innovations.

Further information is available online at:
www.bmbf.de/datipilot
www.ash-berlin.eu/forschung/forschungsprojekte-a-z/game-si/