UNICEF is the world’s leading organisation working for children in danger. For years UNICEF has been democratising innovative learning for over 500,000 staff, partners and supporters through its global hub for learning, Agora. Agora offers a range of opportunities for its learners to develop their skills and welcomes other partners and the general public. As part of it’s “innovation in learning” strategy, UNICEF is looking for new ways to create and share interactive learning experiences.
Gamoteca has worked with a number of international humanitarian organisations, e.g. the UN Refugee Agency, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, to create engaging game-based learning content that immerse learners and help them apply their knowledge in a practical way. It also allows users to interact with other learners, to complement traditional self-paced e-learning.
Gamoteca is proud to announce a partnership with UNICEF. As part of the partnership, we have integrated Gamoteca with UNICEF’s e-learning platform, Agora to make game-based learning available to all their staff, partners and supporters. The integration enables Agora users to easily login on the Gamoteca app with their Agora credentials and update their game progress information back to Agora through a Moodle plugin (using LTI). We are also working with UNICEF to create learning games for their Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs) onboarding playlists.
Gamoteca games now available on Agora
The partnership will allow any UNICEF learners on Agora to access a number of game-based learning experiences including:
Staying Motivated while Working remotely:
A game to interact with your colleagues or friends, and make working remotely a more fun and supported experience because working remotely doesn’t mean that your day-to-day work changes, it only changes where you do it from.
Coaching and mentoring:
This game will help you to put into practice the coaching skills, it will enable you to practically apply your coaching knowledge and assess the impact of your coaching practice.
Design Thinking:
This is a game that serves as a guide to integrating Design Thinking in your creative process. This two-player game is a 5-step process with a combination of activities and exercises that will ensure a creative approach that places the end-user at its centre.
Onboarding:
A game for organisations to onboard new employees in a fun, engaging manner that accounts for the unique value that the organisation and new employee bring to each other. The game includes fun activities to introduce a new employee to the organisation’s vision that is uniquely tailored to them.
Co-creating new games on the Core Commitments for Children (CCCs)
Interactivity, engagement and feedback in e-learning is vital to achieving learning objectives and positive behavioural change. Gamoteca offers a platform that allows trainers to easily create game-based learning that is engaging, experiential, allows users to practice what they have learned and receive feedback from other learners or facilitators.
The Humanitarian Learning and Development team at Unicef have been developing blended learning playlists on Agora for the Core Commitments for Children (CCCs) as part of their onboarding and learning strategy. The team decided to take an innovative approach to complement the self-guided learning materials and resources on Agora with experiential, reflective and scenario-based learning games using Gamoteca. The team is initial focussing on two commitments:
1. Gender Equality
Together with Gamoteca, the team has co-created two new learning games. The first game focuses on Gender, it’s impact on humanitarian programmes, the importance of understanding local contexts and working through locally-led organisations. The team worked closely with the subject matter specialists through a design thinking workshop, where the main learning objectives were agreed upon and the game dynamics were discussed. In this two-player game, one user takes the role of a Unicef staff member, and the other user takes the role of a local organization focusing on gender issues in a fictional country facing a humanitarian crisis. Through the game, both users have to understand each other’s perspectives, explore collaboration, and challenge each other to make the best decision in a difficult context.
2. Child Protection
In the second Child Protection game, the user takes the role of UNICEF staff member. They are immersed in the events of two days in a fictional country and the decisions they make are related to Child Protection issues they face there. The player faces difficult choices that will challenge their knowledge on child protection in complex situations. When the user makes a decision, they will be prompted to explain their response, making the learner reflect on their thinking process rather than just making closed choices.
Co-creating games has been a great learning experience for the Gamoteca and UNICEF teams, and the goal has been to empower the Unicef team to take ownership of the game creation process, and use iterative user testing and feedback loops to keep improving the learning outcomes.
Learn more about working with us to co-create learning games for your organisation here.