SERENA

Female service technicians for wind power plants or installaton technicians for solar systems are nothing exotic anymore. Giving girls an understanding of such highly attractive job profiles in the ares of renewable energies is the aim of the research project Serena.

In the nearly triennial project, that is funded by the german ministry of education and research, the „Wissenschaftsladen Bonn“ (WILA Bonn) developes a serious game for 13 to 15 year old girls together with professional educators and instructional psychologists of the technical university of Dresden and the game studio „the Good Evil“. A serious game is a computer game, with whom knowledge and competencies can be acquired in a playful manner.

„But it is not going to be a classical educational game. The girls should rather dive into an imaginary gaming world and meet challenges of technical professions from the area of renewable energies there“, says project coordinator Iken Draeger from the Wissenschaftsladen Bonn.

Technical jobs, especially in such ja young sector, are hardly known to date for many girls. Not a single technical profession had been unter the 25 most popular occupations of girls. A commong reason is, that girls think they are less capable than boys on a technical scale. This is about to chance, because the energy sector, which by and by transforms to one of renewable energies, needs qualified professionals and can offer something, that is the crucial factor for womens carrer choice: women prefer meaningful, society changing occupational activities. To interest and encourage the girls for jobs in the field of renewable energies with a computer game is quite promising: The share of game playing girls increases continously, almost half of all gamers are female and especially serious games are played by girls more and more.

To identify the relevant jobs and themes for the serious game and to create the corresponding game situations, activities on the labour market and curricular requirements as well as typical and interesting working situations and problems of selected professions are analyezed and collected. Female students of two promoter schools in Neuss and Dresden and commited young female gamers are included in the game design from the start and their interests, preferences and competencies are collected. During the project, the game is tested and evaluated in different stages of progression.

Within the frame of SERENA, the chair of psychology of learning and instruction especially deals with the feedback design in serious games and the empirical examination of motivational and cognitive effect of computer games.

Project homepage:

www.serena.wilabonn.de

Contact person: Dr. Felix Kapp (felix.kapp@tu-dresden.de)