Atari, Bioware and West Nottinghamshire College have teamed up and created an educational gaming environment using ‘Neverwinter Nights’.

“They prototyped a scenario that allowed learners to interact in a fantasy setting involving team working and problem solving situations. The prototype was designed to be used for reinforcement and evidence generation in a ‘fun’ environment.

They’ve accomplished amazing results and they’ve won the 2004/05 Becta Beacon Award for The Effective Use of Information Learning Technology to Enhance Teaching and Support Learning (jeez…that was a mouthfull).

Great stuff! It’s lovely to see education taking games seriously. The game was designed (or re-designed) to map all of the Edexcel Key Skill evidence requirements and they saw an increase of students passed from 90% to 100%.

After some digging after reading the initial article that caught my attention, this all seems to be rather old news that has passed me by. I suppose the news of today is that it is now going to be offered to other educational institutions. I wonder what the market value of a game like this is?

A big thank you to Incredible Mr. Hove for the info!