Esports in Education: A Practical Learning Supplement

By: Zach Lewis

“Esports” is a word that means many different things to many different people. To many, esports is an entirely foreign concept while to others, it's the foundation of a digital lifestyle. For someone not acquainted with esports, the industry can seem bizarre. After all, how can competitive video gaming ever be considered normal, valuable, or even healthy? 

Sports, in the traditional sense, are common - and have been common for thousands of years. People have always found a way to gamify their recreation with physicality in running, fighting, throwing, kicking, catching and more.  Esports however, isn’t really a physical activity; leaning instead into teamwork and reactive memory, it’s almost entirely a battle of minds.

With new cultural and technological trends, however, a battle of minds is actually becoming a prominent part of humanity’s standard entertainment. Never before have people been this computer literate. Never before have people consumed more digital content than they have now. And never before have people been so accustomed to stay-at-home activities in the face of a pandemic fallout. 

Esports is here, and it's here to stay – particularly in the scholastic world. In 2014 Robert Morris University introduced the first ever scholastic esports scholarships. In one short decade collegiate esports has come far, particularly ramping up in the last five years. According to the 2022 Esports Foundry Trends Report, by 2022, over half that year’s programs had reached three years of age (with an estimated 500+ total programs). 

To better understand this metric, however, the measure of what constitutes an esports program is important to consider. In the Esports Foundry report, the term “program” could refer to either student groups/organizations or university-backed programs. At the time, only about 20-25% of “programs” were actually supported by their university with full-time staff, operational funding, and facility space. In this regard, scholastic esports is still very much a grassroots movement for many universities. 

Nonetheless, at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) and many other midwest universities, esports is finally stepping away from its humble beginnings. Leading our industry in many ways, EMU Esports is taking new and bold steps in developing the concept of what it means to be a collegiate esports program. Here are a few strategic initiatives that EMU Esports and select other major universities are engaging with to get ahead of the pack: 

1. Enhancing Student Engagement

2. Developing Academic Integrations

3. Enabling Career Development

4. Offering Health & Wellness Programs

5. Incorporating Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives

6. Advancing University Technologies

7. Facilitating Recruitment/Retention (Scholarship) Programs

While each of these strategies could be a book in and of themselves, education is the focus of today’s discussion. Teaching and learning through esports is a powerful tool that is just now being discovered by top programs such as ours. The reason for this emerging trend lies in the classification of collegiate esports by university administrations. At some universities, esports falls under athletics while at others, esports reports to student life or another similar department. To fall under anything other than athletics, esports finds itself as something of an anomaly on campus: not quite varsity, but not quite a club. 

In this middle ground lies a core advantage for collegiate esports that is not easily replicated by most other university programs. Esports programs can grow as their own competitive organizations while incorporating hands-on learning experiences in a number of academic disciplines. By delivering unique interdisciplinary internship positions, esports programs can create value by utilizing students to simulate the collaborations of real-world business departments. 

As a result, an esports program operates much like you’d expect a real world company to operate. While each “departmental” student group is responsible for their own field (marketing, broadcast, cinematography, computer science, graphic design, team management, etc.), cross-group collaboration becomes necessary to achieve challenging goals set by program management. By setting high standards, program directors can subtly encourage students to attempt solving large problems together, preparing them for what comes after college.

Group collaboration, then, also creates a catalyst for the individual students’ desires to learn. While a student may begin an internship with limited experience outside the classroom, they find themselves wanting to live up to the expectations set by their similarly positioned peers. Then, in a carefully curated healthy co-working environment, expectation changes from being something daunting into being something to be conquered. With this motivation, a combination of professional guidance, personal research, and hands-on experience, each student becomes more capable of delivering skilled work in what is expected to be their field of expertise. 

The commitment of an internship isn’t where the positive influence of esports has to end, however. The esports co-working experience can be extended into regular classroom projects as well. Either by replicating a part of an internship or by piggy-backing off of an existing project, students across our campus can be given the opportunity to learn through esports. By becoming temporarily involved with an esports program, almost any student can accent their education with hands-on experience in an industry that is unlike anything they have experienced before.

All in all, esports is just now becoming a tool for teaching and learning at the university level. While it is certainly still growing and evolving regularly, the esports industry may very well become a model for future learning programs. Today, it is our responsibility to become a pioneer in an emerging industry that may provide our students with new and exciting opportunities. 

With this said, I invite you to join me, and the Faculty Development Center, for a program focused on Teaching and Learning Through ESports on Wednesday, March 13, at 12:30 PM.  This will be in the Faculty Development Center (109 Halle) and on Zoom.  We hope you can join us for a fun conversation - you can register to attend here.  Thank you for joining us for this interesting foray into a new arena for teaching and learning.