The ARIS team is excited to announce the International ARIS Summit will be held in Madison, Wisconsin on August 16, 2016, one day before GLS. ARIS is a user-friendly, open source platform for creating and playing mobile games, tours, and interactive stories where players experience a hybrid world of virtual interactive characters, items, and media placed in physical space.

This will be the fourth year of the ARIS Summit, an event that continues to offer an incredible time connecting and collaborating with other educators, researchers, and designers as well as the ARIS team. During the action-packed day you will hear stories from other ARIS educators, participate in live demos, and partake in workshops to either power up your current abilities or learn the basics through our ARIS 101 workshops.

We are excited to facilitate a few new session types this year:
“Make My Game!” –a group design session where members from the ARIS community will help plan, design or test your game idea.

“Grant Writing Speed Dating” —a session where participants will share and learn about upcoming funding opportunities and pitch their ideas to form collaborative teams.

Cost: $125 early-bird before July 1, $150 starting July 1.

Calling advanced doctoral students! Trying to figure out the job market? What to do *after* you graduate? Want to talk with some scholars and professionals who have taken different trajectories in recent years? Come to our special mentorship lunch, hosted by Deborah Fields and some special colleagues. We’ll eat and chat about possibilities, challenges, and practicalities of pursing careers after graduation. Reserve your seat on the ‘Additional Options’ page when you register.

Whether you are commissioning a game from a developer, or a developer working on a project for a client, or the market in general, this workshop provides an in-depth end-to-end look at how to build games for impact purposes.  This includes health, education, behavior change, and more.

The key to the workshop is that it focuses on general approaches to designing games, but spends much more time in-detail looking at two key issues facing many impact game projects:

1. What’s are the differences when making a game for impact vs. entertainment games.

2. What are the key responsibilities and need-to-knows when game projects involve those who have not built games before?  How can you optimize game development when it key members of the development and player sides of the equation are not everyday game developers or players?

Game for impact projects are different-by-design.  Drawing upon over a decade of experience advising, designing, and building projects across many different platforms, purposes, and audiences workshop leader Ben Sawyer will help both developers, and commissioners of such projects reach better outcomes.

10:00 am to 5:00 pm. $160.00 for this exclusive event includes lunch: register here 

The Inaugural Games + Learning + Society Early Career Workshop offers select early career scholars the opportunity for valuable career advice and critical feedback on their scholarship.

The purpose of the workshop is to nurture early career scholars in Games and Learning.  We endeavor to both widen the field and deepen research in the field as a new generation of scholars embarks on their careers. The workshop will provide mentorship, build networks, and through collegial support work to advance and propel the the study of Games and Learning.

The workshops will consist of several events including panels on publishing, small group mentor time with senior scholars, professional development planning activities, and a grant writing working group. They will also have the opportunity to build new peer relationships and potential collaborations with other early career scholars who are part of the workshop.

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE ON JUNE 3, 2016. Application details here.

The GLS Showcase is a chance to celebrate the best of educational games. The Showcase provides an opportunity for you to play games made by your colleagues. We will also hold an evening GLS Showcase Award Ceremony for the top five games on Thursday evening with special guest judges.

Speed Runs are the GLS version of Ignite talks. This year’s speed run’s session will feature invited talks from top folks in the games and learning field. Come prepared for fast-paced, brilliant, and provocative ideas!