InterAction Education™: My focus over the years
For many years, I trained to be a school teacher. Feeling held back from my goal of education by industry politics, I moved to corporate education and found two ends of a spectrum: clients who wanted to sit in a room and be lectured at and given homework, and clients who were more interested in the outcome of growth and education instead of the means of getting there. Every person has their preferences, but I found my own preference was working with those clients who were interested to try new things and have an active part in building their knowledge and understanding during a session. Thus, InterAction Education™ became my new brand, focused on having learners be active participants in their educative journey.
After repeated feedback from university students how refreshing the activities were compared to sitting in a lecture being spoken at, I doubled down on InterAction’s fun and engaging methods and I used my love of board games and educational design to create a learning game called TeamBuilders™!
TeamBuilders™: A game or a tool?
After the design and playtesting of TeamBuilders™, I brought it to the International Toy Trade Fair in Nuremburg to showcase to publishers, hoping for someone to be interesting in marketing a corporate learning game. There were many educational game and toy publishers present, but they showed no interest in launching a portfolio directed at corporate training and instead were focused on schools and children (traditionally audiences that were meant to be ‘educated’).
Instead, the publishers showing the most interest in TeamBuilders™ were looking at it as a card game and showed interest in stripping the game of the educational content and theme and using instead the mechanics of the game design itself. I decided to self-publish, maintaining the integrity of the product.
TeamBuilders™ functions as:
1. A game to break the ice in a new group, to build communication with peers over time, or even to gamify the knowledge of the team role models behind it.
2. A conflict resolution tool for existing teams with issues.
3. A feedback and reflection tool to help people recognize their strengths and focal points.
4. A means of mapping out teams to aid in recruitment of fitting candidates for a position.
Serious Games: Where to pitch them?
I launched TeamBuilders™ at a game expo in the UK. I was unsure how to approach sales pitches. I am not a natural salesman. I love to network and connect with people, but I don’t like to feel like I am pushing myself onto people. For me to get this product in front of the people it could help, I would have to:
1. Find companies open to hearing a pitch
2. Find a contact in the company able to make decisions
3. Convince the contact that training (the first thing in budget cuts to go!) was necessary
4. Keep the contact interested after hearing something called a ‘game’
5. Restart the process to convince participants that using a ‘game’ was not a waste of their time.
At the games expo, I had tens of thousands of people passing by who were already familiar with the usefulness of games, and most worked somewhere, so the barrier became people able to make decisions. At that expo alone TeamBuilders™ was bought by a film director, a public health official, and a mother for her family at home. I never imagined the tool in any of those contexts. Countless teachers were also interested, prompting me to start designing a junior version (your support in getting this to school kids would be fantastic!)
Forward and onward: My next steps as InterAction Education™
I’ve decided to move forward with more intent and focus on Serious Games. TeamBuilders™ is generating interest and the junior version hopefully will help students in their interpersonal journeys. I have a couple upcoming designs that are in the playtest phase that will hopefully launch in the coming year or two and then the plan is to stick to a small portfolio of high quality corporate training interventions. Promoting participation in corporate continuous learning and self growth!
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