With the serious game “La Table de Marie”,
created in partnership with Audace,
SKEMA Business School wins the Digital Learning Trophy
SKEMA Business School, a leading French management school, has just won the Digital Learning Trophy in the “Higher Education” category. This victory rewards its efforts in educational innovation, particularly through an innovative training project developed with the assistance of Audace.
An original solution to meet the new educational requirements of students
Every year, SKEMA Business School organizes the “Knowledge Management Sprint”, a seminar aimed at raising awareness among L3 students of the challenges of knowledge management by putting into perspective its organic and nourishing impact within a structure.
Convinced of the need to review traditional educational models intended for younger generations, SKEMA wanted to design original training mixing multi-player serious games and coaching. Indeed, a pillar of the system is provided by coaches who help students give meaning to their actions, as well as a team of correctors who feed the scores in real time and communicate feedback to the teams.
Serious gaming is a potentially powerful tool, still largely under-exploited, in the context of initial training. A comparative analysis (benchmark) revealed that it was poorly developed in higher education. However, the younger generation of students has high expectations in terms of pedagogy. They consider too much theory without practical application to be insufficient, while too much traditional case studies are seen as repetitive. So there’s a dilemma: Students need to interact with concepts multiple times to learn them, but excessive repetition makes them feel like the content is redundant.
Convinced of the need to rethink traditional educational models, the school therefore sought to meet the new expectations of students by offering a new fun and educational medium: a collaborative serious game entitled “La Table de Marie”.
Inductive pedagogy, as implemented in this system, makes it possible to resolve these dilemmas. It offers students the opportunity to discover in a concrete way the organizational and human issues encountered in the professional world in a fun way, while establishing links with the concepts covered during their undergraduate university program. This approach aims to prepare students for future responsibilities within international companies, by requiring them to work in teams, make collective decisions and make choices within a limited time frame.
“We firmly believe that the earlier students are exposed to complex management situations, the more they will develop responsible management skills, which is essential for both organizations and society as a whole. »
Béatrice TOUSTOU, Teacher-researcher
Bringing together 800 players, divided into 160 teams and across 3 sites in France: the challenge of this highly collaborative serious game
Each year, no less than 800 L3 students, divided into 160 teams on 3 campuses, participate in the Knowledge Management seminar at SKEMA Business School.
To do this, the device developed by Audace had to meet several challenges: managing a large number of players simultaneously, allowing remote team collaboration and the use of a real-time application with a scalable server.
The multiplayer serious game “La Table de Marie” thus immerses students in a scenario similar to that of “Nightmare in the Kitchen”, challenging them to resolve organizational and human issues in a high-end restaurant. They take on the role of consultants and must collaborate as a team to find solutions, while receiving personalized support from coaches and correctors.
This solution is based on the Unity 3D game engine and offers a variety of interactive activities to reinforce learning: closed activities, such as processes and quizzes, as well as open activities focused on creativity and reflection. The application’s features allow students to work interactively and validate their answers as a team.
More than 86% satisfaction: the positive impact of training!
Whether it is collaboration, learning results or the level of involvement and motivation of students, the positive impact of this educational innovation has been clearly noted by the teams of coaches and correctors.
Satisfaction was expressed through direct satisfaction questionnaires and the satisfaction survey carried out by the teaching team. We also organized post-seminar debriefing sessions with class delegates and speakers (see verbatims). The satisfaction percentage is at 86.4%, based on a very good response rate (37.85%).
The specific serious game questionnaire administered by a researcher indicates the following results: interesting activities (88%), absorption by the activities offered (88%), mentally demanding exercises (73%), fun (86%), satisfactory teamwork (88%).
“Best seminar of the year”
“The course we worked the hardest on”
“This inductive pedagogy side is super powerful!”
Building on its success, the project is intended to be disseminated beyond the establishment, thus opening the way to new opportunities in the field of digital learning.
By winning the Digital Learning Trophy, SKEMA Business School demonstrates its commitment to educational innovation and the excellence of its teaching. From our point of view, this success perfectly illustrates the ability of educational institutions to adapt to the needs of students and push the boundaries of traditional learning using digital technologies.
