Gaming for Boosting School Engagement of Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with LDs are an underrecognized and undersupported group throughout society. In schools their problems are often not identified, academic services are not provided, compensation is not allowed, and they are not engaged with school. These issues result in students with LDs being at high risk of early school leaving. Early school leaving is associated with limited employment and life opportunities. Over 10 years, the coordinating partner and others in the partnership have done projects that helped with correct identification and assisting parents of students with LDs in getting appropriate services.This project extends the work directly with academic aspects of student life to finding ways to keep students with LDs be engaged with school. We found that athletics and other outside-of-school-time activities are often available but that gaming is not made available. Gaming is a feature of modern adolescent life and is a way that students can use skills such as language learned in academia to have fun and extend their networks. Some places (such as was seen in DK) use gaming already as a way to increase engagement with school. They do this by providing coaching, space, and tournaments. We decided to help schools and students learn to create tournaments.In addition, this project will use a work tool known as Agile as a way to structure our efforts. We will teach this tool to students. As this is a very popular work methodology in IT, it will increase employability and expose them to an industry where there are large opportunities.The project will have three tournaments during face-to-face learning/teaching/training events. The tournaments will be examples and generate video and other materials that will be used to create the intellectual outputs of a Manual of how to do this, a website with deeper materials and information about tournaments and Agile, and videos as documentation of training and tournaments.20 students with LDs will be directly involved and 12 staff. Dissemination and multiplier events will bring impact with at least 300 more. By popularizing the project via the website and school visits, the reach extends significantly. The project has a number of direct, long term benefits: schools will be further sensitized to the issues and potential of students with LDs. Students with LDs will be more deeply engaged in school and they will have learned a work organisation structure that can increase their employability. They will also be able to point to the outputs as examples of their work.