In this Section we explore pathways to starting your school Minecraft esports team (Section 6.1), identifying the key steps in the process of introducing esports to your school. We invite experienced esports educators to share their expertise, lessons learned and top tips with us (Section 6.2), as well as outlining some of the basic considerations in setting up an inclusive esports space in your school or community (Section 6.3)
There are many different ways to begin building an Esports team, club or program at your school. How you choose to do this will depend on your school’s ethos and context. Below we outline 8 key steps that we believe are important when starting out, as illustrated in Figure 32. We’ve gathered this information from some of our research as well as from talking to educators who have successfully built their own team.
The 8 steps don’t necessarily have to be taken in the order outlined below, but we believe any good, sustainable and impactful practice begins with people – so steps 1, 2 and 3 focus on building relationships and shared understandings with key stakeholders. Steps 4 and 5 encourage strategic growth and development of your esports vision by using sound planning and data to build a persuasive case for esports, and Steps 6, 7 and 8 focus on the practicalities of establishing and managing an esports team and running a pilot esports program or club. We explore these steps in greater depth below.
Figure 32 An 8-step pathway to building a Minecraft Esports team
Start with Students
Survey student interest and participation in esports
We know it’s very likely that many of your students know what esports is, and a high number may already be playing or watching esports, but this may not be the case for every child, or every school across the country. Connect with your students to find out what they already know about esports.
Design a survey that lets you really come to understand how your students feel about it, who would participate and who might find it difficult to join in. Evaluations conducted in schools suggests that esports programs can help include those children who are sometimes disenfranchised, improve attendance and motivation, and can positively affect academic learning and GPA. Begin to gather data from your students and use this as a basis for determining the kinds of impacts you might be able to see from an esports program or club in your school.
Minecraft is often referred to as the great equalizer. It’s easily accessible, open gameplay makes it inclusive and collaborative, attracting players across wide demographic and age ranges. If your survey data suggests there may be some students who don’t have experience playing typical esports titles, Minecraft may offer these students a safe and welcoming first step into the esports domain.
Identify colleagues with experience, passion, interest or expertise
In academic esports, often the challenge comes from gaining support from other adults, who may perceive video gaming as a poor use of school time. The research evidence for game-based learning is strong and sound, however by scoping out interest for esports among your colleagues you will be able to identify adults who have experience in playing video games (and potentially in playing esports), have a passion for game-based learning, or who have coached or delivered health and wellbeing activities. It may also enable you to identify any resistance or concerns within the school community early on, which can be addressed through your preparations. Note these concerns, or ask about them specifically in a whole-school survey (including staff, PTA, librarians, IT support and so on) , it will be important to tackle fears and misconceptions head on.
Minecraft Education has been specifically designed for use in schools. It has several education features built in, and purposefully does not support the gory elements of some other games. You may find that starting out with Minecraft as esports helps address some of the worries and concerns of your community.
Create a focus group to develop vision and goals
From your survey of students and staff, you should be able to identify colleagues who have some expertise in this area, as well as students and parents who can be a representative sample of the larger school community. Work with this focus group, using tools such as surveys, focus group discussions, polls, etc. to collect, record and analyze data to:
The involvement of staff, parents and students helps ensure that this preparatory work is inclusive, innovative and student-centered. All of the initial groundwork in steps 1-3 enable you to use a strong evidence-base before addressing your school leadership team (as in step 4 below). A student centered approach in some existing programs has enabled educators to identify areas of tension or challenge, and address them head on:
Develop a Vision and Values framework for your school stakeholders
Use the work undertaken in your focus group to develop a strategy document that you can present to key stakeholders (school leaders, managers, parents and so on), ensure you outline the benefits as well as addressing any concerns the school may have. Set out the What, Why and How of esports for them and don’t be afraid to set targets for your esports pilot. For example if you know your school has a STEM agenda, or a digital literacy drive, use the data collected in the surveys to demonstrate how this initiative can support these aims. At this stage, there is an opportunity to scope out your operational plan. This might include:
It’s important that your team has a coach, this needn’t necessarily be someone who has coaching experience, but it should be someone who is willing to play the game, learn the strategies, and help students develop skills to improve their collaborative game-play. It’s also important that this person can help students review their play, look at analytics and use those to develop strategy and plans for future play. You may also wish to assign a role of General Manager. This person would be a first point of contact, deal with administrative issues such as booking rooms, setting up events, organizing practice etc. Finally, it can be helpful to have a Technical Advisor. This role (and indeed all three roles) may well be fulfilled by one person who is able to do all of the above, but if your coach does have a background in sport education, for example, they may not feel overly comfortable with being in charge of the technical set up for competitions etc. Consider all of your needs, and the roles that you require to be filled. If this sounds daunting, it may be helpful to connect with other educators who have been in your shoes. Check out the #EsportEdu community on twitter – a friendly, helpful and welcoming community of esports educators who will be more than happy to help.
Depending on whether you have opted to run a club or a program, you may be happy to begin in a school IT lab. It may be that your school operates a ‘digital classroom in a box’ (a class set of lap tops that can be booked out for particular sessions), or maybe you school has a flexible learning space that can be tailored to the needs of different educators/students. However your school operates, it’s important to identify a space that will fulfil your needs such as team practice, debriefings (analytics and strategy meetings) and potentially competitions. The wonderful thing about esports is that, as you first begin, students can practice and play with each other from home, assuming all students have access to the technology, however as you begin to grow your team properly, it will be important to establish regular practice, and develop team spirit etc. through collegial, face-to-face meetings. If you decide to deliver esports as part of an elective or school program, you may want to consider options such as a ‘digital classroom in a box’ that enable to you to flexibly introduce devices into your learning space, as well as considering the use of the gym and other sport-related facilities – many existing curricular esports programs establish strong, positive nutrition and exercise plans as part of a student’s esports wellbeing mindset. Some esports educators have tapped into resources in their wider community in order to access the kinds of facilities they need for their esports clubs:
Technology can be a large obstacle to any digital learning program for three main reasons outlined here:
You may find that you have enough suitable technology to get by in your pilot, or you may find you have to do this with a combination of school tech and a Bring Your Own Device drive with students. However to fully ramp this up and roll it out wider, and to get the very best from it you will need to invest in appropriate, up-to-date equipment in the longer term. This may come from sponsors or donors in the community, so it may be worth identifying these patrons early on and inviting them to some of your matches, or to your fundraiser events.
Generate community-wide support for your project
Once your school leadership have signed off on the plan, prepare to get the whole school community on-board (parents, teachers, administrators and so on). Hold an information evening, or prepare a letter for home, that outlines the benefits and addresses concerns. You may wish to deliver a special assembly for students or run an interactive event such as a student-teacher esports play-off to drive interest and support for the coming pilot. In terms of the sustainability of your esports initiative, invite a wide range of students to take part with the aim that in subsequent seasons, older students will be able to mentor or perhaps even coach younger teams, as part of their own contribution and learning.
Choose players, set rules, start practice and scaffold the learning experiences
The steps you take here depend very much on how you intend to deliver your esports activities (club, program, elective etc.). In general, it’s good practice to
Outline what esports mean in your school (with your school definition, this may include expectations such as attendance and GPA etc.), rules of participation and practice (e.g. if you join our team you must commit to one hour of practice per week, one hour of sport with the team, and completion of a sleep and nutrition diary every week). Setting out clear expectations in this way will enable interested students to differentiate between playing video-games for leisure, and being part of a committed team. It will provide the correct springboard for inviting students to collectively draw up a charter of fair play and ethics for their own esports engagement.
If this is part of a wider program, you may be trying to run five or six small teams in a class of thirty students as part of embedded lessons, or if in a club format you may be running tryouts. Your team coach will lead this initial team set up, and begin to introduce some soft-launch games to get a feel for the strengths of each of your players, and the kinds of roles they naturally gravitate towards. Briefings and Debriefings should envelope digital practice to ensure students learn key skills of reflection, giving and receiving feedback, practicing communication, resolving arguments, and engaging in ethical conduct, as well as analyzing play and devising future strategy.
Moving from initial play and set up to developing a team that works and plays well together is the aim. This will require the team coaches, managers, and players to work to establish clear roles (team captain and subsequent hierarchy), clear, concise communication, decisive action in-game, and reflective practice (in and out of game). Team managers will have to be consistent in how they approach the ways in which players meet expectations around attendance, academic achievement, conduct and so on.
All of the research on game-based learning makes a clear case for the role of the educator in helping students make connections. While we want these activities to be student-led as much as possible, it’s important that the educator team provide adequate scaffolding for students to learn essential skills in communication, working with others, reflecting on action, setting goals, considering wellbeing and so on. Gradually, as students become adept, they will take on more of these roles, and may even be able to lead team briefings and debriefings, or work to become coaches for younger/newer teams in the school.
Competitive play within the school will be wonderful for team practice, and can take the form of:
However, students will have opportunities to really try out their strategies and skills against other schools. Here the team manager may want to investigate starting a league with other schools in the district or region, or joining an existing league.
Minecraft Education is a naturally multi-player game, designed from core principles to allow players to interact within the same game world. It enables players to create, collaborate and compete with each other while communicating easily through the in-built chat function and/or a third party voice chat software. Using the Minecraft Esports games that accompany this resource, students will be able to compete with each other easily and in a safe environment that has been designed with students and teachers in mind.
Launch a pilot semester or season, record outcomes and evaluate successes and development needs
With your school community on-board, and your teams and expectations well-established, it’s time to run your pilot esports activity with select classes or groups. Your team of colleagues should have undertaken key roles (coach, digital champion, manager etc.), and should support monitoring and evaluation activities in addition to delivering the esports program throughout the pilot. If you deliver esports as part of a program, you may choose one or two classes to work with at first, embedding game-play into wider lessons. If you decide to deliver this as a club, you may need to run try-outs, identify players, and even create a number of different teams to enable competition practice, and to satisfy demand. Make sure you and your colleagues have thoroughly thought through how you will monitor, record and evaluate the pilot activities, as everything you learn here can be used to improve and scale your esports offering.
Use the evidence collected to improve and scale up
Work with your colleagues to review the evaluation data you have collected, and present this to your school leadership. Like esports activities in other schools, you may see improvements in attendance, motivation or even in academic performance. This may enable you to make a case for widening the program, joining a scholastic esports league (to compete with other schools) or to work with teachers across the entire school community to create a truly cross-curricular learning program around esports to meet your school’s wider ethos and vision.