PfISD Esports Program Promotes Student Engagement and Career Skills

What if every student felt a positive strong connection to their school community?

Imagine a group of players competing in a computer game to successfully complete a series of complex tasks for victory. Afterwords, they reflect on how they explicitly practice skills for effective communication, collaboration, and empathy.

Last week, that’s what happened at Pfluegerville Intermediate School District (PfISD) as one action based on their three-year esports implementation plan. Players competed in Overcooked and Minecraft competition challenges that tested their skills in communication, collaboration, empathy, and problem solving. The players were not high school or middle school students. The participants were teachers and administrators immersed in a planning institute to prepare for an esports program launch this coming August. By building structures for an esports community that promoted important skills for students through play, they were committed to creating a program that maximized participation in culture based on healthy interactions and building a sense of belonging.

Conditions for Success

It’s a joy and honor to work with school teams who understand and are committed to designing an esports program that maximizes student engagement as a means towards academic success. This reflects my recent experiences supporting Pflugerville ISD staff as they design and launch their esports program. While many schools value how competitive esports teams are like traditional sports for providing students a pathway to represent their school in competitions, PfISD recognizes that an esports program needs to be more than just competitive teams. They are committed to serving the needs of the many students who want to be part of the experience.

In a PEW Study 85% of teens said that they play computer games, of which 72% do so as a social experience. Gaming titles provide an important means to reengage students into schools. Only having competitive esports teams cannot offer enough seats at the table for the many students who could be reached. The same study found that 47% of teens made friends through gaming experiences. I found similar impacts in my work with running esports club-like camps.

Clubs, courses, intramurals, and marketing and production groups expand opportunities for many more students. These components are necessary for any school program that holds a big picture of how esports can help students feel a sense of belonging to their school community and the district. However, accomplishing everything can seem overwhelming.

PfISD did much important groundwork regarding infrastructure and community buy-in before I came to the table. Using their work as a foundation, I facilitated their planning session as they created a three-year esports implementation plan. It contains all the core components to build a quality program over time, including markers to best ensure long-term sustainability and success.

Using the implementation plan as a compass, they designed the structures for clubs and teams that promotes an esports community that helps students feel welcomed, gain a sense of belonging, and promotes global professional skills, including alignment with the ISTE Standards for Students. Their first year is focused on building the community and positive experiences inside the district. This is where clubs and intramurals can play a pivotal role in building student engagement and community value of what esports can offer. The competitive team concept is grown alongside.

Students have Many Choices for How to Participate

Social Connections

The same PEW Study found that 47% of teens stated that they made friends through gaming, which makes sense considering the 72% who game for the purpose of socializing with others. Esports programs that invest in clubs and intramurals expand the number of students who can engage in a formal school function that they care about. Such opportunities become more impactful for those students who do not find connection with any existing traditional school programs. Through esports many more students find their tribe.

Club and Team Leadership

Clubs open many opportunities for students to take on a variety of leadership roles and responsibilities. Some options include in-club social events, tournaments, speed run challenges, content creation for marketing and entertainment, intramurals, and recruiting speakers from colleges and computer science industries. Clubs are the best community to engage many students than is possible with just having competitive teams because it’s a laboratory for experimenting with different esports experiences.

Casual Competitions through Intramurals

Not all gamers want to compete on a varsity team. Their interest is not about committing to a team where there is an expectation for time and expectations. Gamers who are casual competitors want to play with their friends and compete on their own terms. This could mean limit-testing skills or trying unique builds which likely could lead to losing the game. For them, the joy of play is not primarily about winning. They play to create fun memories for themselves and their friends. Intramurals give these players, including those not yet good enough to make the varsity team, a space to compete based on their own expectations.

Serious Competitive Play between Schools

PfISD is doing something their first year that gives them experience with formal competitions while making space and time to build capacity and access for many students. They plan to run a couple competition events between their high schools. The planning is in process. Some possible directions that they “could” go might include:

• Run a district-wide intramural tournament
  This option maximizes the number of students to participate. It gives the coaches opportunities to scout potential varsity players for year two competition against schools outside of the district.
• Run a district-wide tournament for formal teams
  This allows coaches to draw players from the club experience to compete in a formal structure. This competition gives players and coaching staff practical experiences that will prepare them for the formal varsity competitions in the following year. Each school could field one or more teams to maximize the experiences.

In both settings, student staff help with running the competitions. More leadership experience translates to a stronger esports program in the future.

Early Marketing and Production Experiences

Clubs can offer students experiences with content creation, such as digital print journalism, videos, shout casting, and analyst team conversations. Students get to practice these roles as part of club activities, intramurals, and cross-school tournaments. PfISD will be able to leverage these experiences to develop talent going into the following year when formal varsity teams will compete, as well as develop future production talent over the years.

Making an Esports Dream a Reality

When the goal is to maximize students’ engagement into school through esports, many staff could feel overwhelmed by the challenge: How do we enable many students to access a variety of esports opportunities in school? Establishing a multi-year implementation plan helps schools prioritize when a component is launched and the level of build. This approach best ensures that a school can dream big and put together a plan that makes what is wanted a reality. In three years, Pflugerville Intermediate School District will have an esports program that is robust with a depth of opportunities that interest many students.

Then, it will be time for a new three-year implementation plan that takes them to the next level.