20 years ago – back in 2006 – we just had kicked-off our first big European Research Project for digital game-based learning. The project was called “ELEKTRA” (an acronym for “Enhancing Learning & Knowledge Transfer”) and its interdisciplinary and international team of scientists, pedagogues, psychologists, software developers, game designers and artists sat down together to answer the research question: “Can we learn with video games? And if yes, how?”
We answered the question by creating the Learning Game “ELEKTRA”. The game was about learning physics/optics for European pupils aged 12+.
The cinematic intro of “ELEKTRA” transported the players straight from the year 2006 to the very evening of August, 12th. in the year 2026 – just right in time for the dawn of the upcoming solar eclipse and the start of the adventure in the game ( watch it until the end – and: yes, I know that the timing of the trailer is painfully way too long for today’s tik-tok-era 😉 )
While the science behind the game – the ocurrence of the solar ecpilpse over Europe – will be proven 20 years later today on this very evening – with scientific precision and prediction ( key message here: Trust Team Science! …and thanks to Matthias, Jean-Loup and Laurent as pedagogical and didactic designers of the game! 😉 ) – we are right here, right now today – on August, 12th. in 2026 – after all these years and we are still fighting Galileo Galilei´s battle against “darkness and superstition” twenty years later! Just as the scientific prediction of today’s solar eclipse will be proven by the factual darkening of the sun this evening, ELEKTRA and many of our following games and projects have answered our basic research question in the meantime: Yes, we can learn with video games! And – as in any truly successful research project – we have proven that we had asked the wrong question in the begining of our scientific learning game adventure: We learned that we don’t need to stuff learning into entertainment games, but that entertainment games are fun because we learn in them. 😉
To all ELEKTRA fellows out there in the wilderness of real life and science-hives: Have a special evening today! (…and maybe think of Galileo’s ghost, that we had summoned together 20 years ago in a computer game 😉 )
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