Xbox has teamed up with Ukie’s Digital Schoolhouse to launch Beyond Xbox: Field Trips, a series of interactive learning experiences available on Spotifyto help young people learn through play.
These experiences will be delivered as a podcast series with seven Xbox Game Pass titles. Each audio journey focuses on a specific game and the skills developed and refined while playing. The purpose of the excursions is to help young people sharpen thought processes, learn collaboration skills and experience success in an immersive environment.
Xbox Wire had the opportunity to sit down with Ollie Bray, co-author of the European Games in Schools Handbook, who helped shape this project. With Bray, we discovered how the podcasts came to be and what makes the Xbox catalog the perfect choice for skills-based learning.
Bray has a background as a teacher and, like many academics, was frustrated by more traditional methods of engaging young people in classroom activities. The original thought process for how games can help with this hurdle comes from SimCitythat encourages its players to think about urban planning in interesting ways.
“The traditional approaches are often very boring, but games and simulations offer personalized learning experiences,” says Bray. “When we think about ‘soft skills’, these gaming environments are a really good example of how to develop them.”
According to Bray, Beyond Xbox: Field Trips has several key goals in mind. One is to present video games as tools that can create powerful learning opportunities.
The other is to show that games do not necessarily have to be designed specifically for educational purposes to have educational benefits.
We had the opportunity to listen to it Sea of Thieves Pre-launch episode of Beyond Xbox: Field Trips, focused on encouraging teamwork and delegation – something that is already an integral part Sea of Thieves‘ Play style.
“There are aspects of the game where young people are picking up cards that relate to geography, the way we learn about latitudes and longitudes, compass directions, map orientation and all sorts of skills,” Bray says.
“It’s the kind of hard learning you expect in a geography class, often reinforced by a textbook or video, but in this case we’re reinforcing it with interactive gameplay that motivates young people.”
Commenting on the campaign, Shahneila Saeed, Director of Digital Schoolhouse and Head of Education at Ukie, added: “We are delighted to support such an original and unique program that uses games to develop young people’s skills.” I can do it Can’t wait to see how these audio learning journeys will be implemented across our Digital Schoolhouse network in the coming months and what impact they will have.”
Every audio learning journey is available on Spotifyand challenges players to participate in a series of in-game tasks to develop important soft skills. All seven games are available through Xbox Game Passand can be seen below along with the skills they promote:
- Grounded – Problem solving and analytical thinking
- Sea of Thieves – Teamwork and delegation
- Minecraft – Creativity and innovation
- Microsoft Flight Simulator – Concentration and hard work
- PowerWash simulator – Motivation and prioritization
- Age of Empires IV – Strategy and decision making
- Cities: Skylines – Planning and adaptability
The selection of Game Pass titles was another important element of Beyond Xbox: Field Trips. Bray shares that all of these games can be accessed with just a Game Pass membership.
“We wanted to include a range of different game genres to cater to different interests,” explains Bray. “There you will find your classic sandbox game, Minecraft; Survival elements Grounded; and more surprising titles like Powerwash simulatora game that is difficult to explain but extremely therapeutic to play.”
A final point that Bray raises is that gaming is strongly encouraged in early development and later in adulthood, but there is a middle point where the use of resources such as video games is underutilized. Bray adds: “It makes me wonder if we can rethink the approach to the middle part a bit – games are a very engaging learning environment.”
Beyond Xbox: Field Trips are now available via Spotify for players in the UK and Mexico. They can also be accessed in more accessible formats as visual guides Xbox.com to accommodate different learning styles.
