The project involved five European third-level colleges: DkIT, Artesis-Plantijn Hogeschool Antwerpen (Belgium), Centria University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University of Lodz (Poland) and Instituto Superior Politécnico Gaya (Portugal). There was a total of 50 students participating in the project with 10 representing each institute.

During the ten days, each team was required to build a prototype of a mobile game app, additionally the students were also tasked with developing marketing and sales plans for their app. The theme the students were presented with for their apps was “sport and health”. The students were mentored by an expert from the City of Antwerp’s Sporting “A” department. The apps that the students created were diverse and focused on a range of topics, such as family fun ways to exercise together, healthy eating, dog walking and daily fitness challenges.

Taking part in intensive projects like this offers many benefits to the participating students. Other than the technical aspects of the project, a major reason for DkIT takes students on Erasmus+ intensive projects is to give students the opportunity to work in multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams. The 50 students that took part in this project were split into ten teams of five, with each team having one student from each participating college. While DkIT took students from the BSc (Hons) Computing in Games Development, other partners took students who studied in different fields, such as business, tourism, ITC and education. During the project, students had to produce four presentations of their game. These presentations showed off the creative, technical and business aspects of the various apps.

Students found the project to be challenging, yet rewarding. The experience was summed up by participating student, Christian Rafferty who said;

The whole experience was amazing from start to end. I think it has been a career shaping experience for me. As we were working in groups comprising four or five students from different areas of study and different countries, we learned how to work together to create, pitch and sell a product in only ten days. We also become great friends over the time that we worked with each other. As a bonus, all of the participating students got the opportunity to party together at some social events that were organised as part of the project. It was an unforgettable experience and I would urge everybody to travel like this if given the chance”.

Relevant Links:

BSc (Hons) Computing in Games Developement