Bubo: A serious game to help students in finding a suitable internship

Abstract

Yubu B.V., for whom the graduation project is carried out, provides a career orientation method (called Yubu) for high schools that uses serious games to motivate students to focus on choosing a study. Making decisions concerning a career is not something that stops after high school and therefore Yubu B.V. has taken interest in offering a career counselling program for students.

Research is carried out to find out how Yubu B.V. can be of service to students. Annual reports from governmental institutions revealed that HBO education (University of Applied Sciences) struggles the most with delayed students and student satisfaction for career orientation programs. Therefore, the decision was made to focus on HBO education. The outcome of the interviews with the target group revealed that an internship is considered an important moment in their career preparation because it provides a period in which students learn if a type of work suits them. Unfortunately, students struggle with finding a suitable internship because they are not certain about their abilities and interests and end up at the wrong company due to the lack of sufficient career orientation programs. Another problem is that it is very difficult to get an invitation for an internship interview resulting in a study delay for many students.

A serious game is designed that helps students to get an invitation for an internship interview that fits with their interests and values so that they have a bigger chance to get selected and enjoy the time they work for a company. The game is played in three steps. Students will do a self-reflection of which the results can be used to search for an internship and after they have found one they try to get an interview invitation from the company.

Students indicated to have an aversion for self-reflecting in general. However, a better self-image helps students in defining their ideal internship. To ensure that students will perform a self-reflection a model is designed for this specific purpose. This model helps students in defining their internship preferences, skills, motives and personal mission. For each of the categories students create playing cards. All of them together form a card deck that generates a character, which is a representation of themselves and is further used as their avatar in the game. Companies use the same model to create a vacancy so that it can be matched with the characters. With a mini-card game students filter through the offers by laying down cards and making combinations. Students can look at the results and can decide to apply for one or more. They will be placed in a queue together with other students who applied. Students can now compete with each other to earn a position at the front by strengthening their card deck (doing more reflecting). At some point the enrolment deadline expires and the few students at the top get the invitation.

Parts of the game are tested separately with the target group with positive responses as result. However, a large scale test needs to be carried out to find out how efficient the system is, by making real matches between students and offers. Furthermore, for the success of the game it is important that schools are involved because they can play an important role in setting up the game. Schools have databases of companies who need interns and can advise students to use the game.