Esports Code The City, Ian Simpson - STACS Spotlight On Success

Ian Simpson, a Computing Science teacher at Albyn School, shared his excellent work he is doing with Esports at his school at the recent Aberdeen Meet Up - Code The City. Showcasing his innovative approach to engaging students with Esports.

“Since April 2024, Albyn's Esports club has been helping students develop crucial life skills through competitive gaming. Recently, I had the privilege of sharing our innovative approach at Code The City, an Aberdeen-based charity that promotes the use of open data for public benefit while advancing Computing Science education in the community.

The purpose of Albyn's Esports club is to provide a space for students to enhance their performance in popular Esports titles while developing their emotional intelligence - the capacity to be aware of and learn to control their emotions and decision making when under pressure is an increasingly important leadership life skill which also enhances communication and interpersonal skills.

To assist supportive conversations and to allow club members to choose to track their own progress I created a leaderboard which summarises data gathered from freely available online game trackers. The students choose to join the leaderboard by sharing their gamer tag and are able to remove themselves from this at any time. There is no personal data recorded to associate students with their gamer tags and, at present, I chose to focus solely on Fortnite given its popularity amongst club members.

My presentation at Code The City revolved around the development of the leaderboard but also the surprising insights that the data gathered offered. For example, it was clear that some players only gamed on the weekend whereas others played weekday evenings (perhaps after the homework and chores were completed!). Sudden unusual increases in gaming activity can also highlight a need for a supportive conversation as students attempt to work through a stressful situation by gaming. The leaderboard has also been a conversation starter and you can often find players from across the year groups discussing tactics and making arrangements to meet up later for squad games.

The talk took around 40 minutes but was eclipsed by the length of the Q&A session afterwards. The audience of software development professionals were incredibly supportive and some shared their data science expertise to suggest ways to store and use data more effectively. One such idea has already been implemented to show students a heat map of their games played, highlighting longer gaming periods in a darker colour. This was so popular with the Esports club that the students immediately suggested ways in which it could be improved to celebrate success by banding these darker coloured boxes in gold when they achieved a win.

The basic leaderboard created as a small addition to highlight the improvements of each club member has already added value to the club as a whole. While it has been important as a tool for skills development, its true purpose is becoming clear: to prepare students for their future beyond school where resilience, good relationships and increased self-regulation is essential.”

Excellent work, Ian!
View Ian's presentation here.

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