
Our Special Interest Groups focus on specific topics and work on them in small groups of interested people. They have half yearly symposiums with project meetings in between.
There are currently three active SIGs:
– SIG Facilitation
– SIG Game Science
– SIG Sustainability
SIG Facilitation – Special Interest Group on Facilitation
This SIG meets twice a year. The next tasks are a setup for an online Train-the-Facilitator webinar series and also research and practice exchange. The next dates you can always find in the calendar.
Here you find a report on the last meeting on Friday, January 17th 2025:
Joining forces in the combined meeting of the sig facilitation and sig sustainability was a great success. We shared a lot of common interest in how to gain more transfer of our SG design and facilitation approaches. I send you a summary of our wonderful research meeting (if you want to have a look how we transferred our (personal) ambitions and plans to 2 important research projects (joint cooperation in research and data gathering for both academic publication purpose and practical use for practitioners), the option for a sustainability games mini conference and special issue (I will make a call for this in the newsletter but if you are interested email me marieke@isaga.net). Furthermore Elyssebeth called for cooperation in making infographics on how to approach facilitation and debriefing for example.
Below I added a free academic proof transcribe tool you can download on your computer, see the link. Because we often want to capture discussions for research data this is an excellent tool you can use safely because it is all only on your computer and not on external servers. It was developed by the university of Zurich.
Here is the link to the free transcribe tool: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n15q44szns2?hl=en-US&gl=US
Furthermore, you find Elyssebeths Facilitation book (to the book) and also a link to the new upcoming book of Gaming and Transfer (eds Toshiko Kikkawa, Willy Kriz, Junkichi Siugiura and Marieke de Wijse- van Heeswijk). This is both an academically sound but also a highly practical book with many examples, cases and description on how to gain even more transfer.
If you want to join either of these projects contact the project leader so you are on their mail list.
SIG Game Science – Special Interest Group on Game Science
Feel free to join this SIG for future publications that are aimed at creating scientific fundaments for SGs as research tool and intervention, as well as the science behind facilitation design and the role of the facilitator.
The special interest group game science is working on a new publication on the role of the facilitator in multiple types of SGs and learning contexts. A publication on the fundamentals of Game Science is under review at the Simulation and Gaming Journal. The aim of this publication is to support researchers in taking Game Sciences as a multidisciplinary well established science. The publication on game science “Positioning Game Science: a reflection on philosophical, epistemological and ontological underpinnings” by Sebastiaan Meijer, Marieke de Wijse-van Heeswijk, Heide Lukosch and Jan Klabbers will soon be published.
SIG Sustainability – Special Interest Group on Games for Sustainability!
The SIG sustainability had a meeting in February and June 2024 on the role of modelling in game design and learning from SGs. Also a new tool was tested called Broad View that is an easy to use tool with a great adaptive interface that can store lots of data (either quantitatively or qualitatively) , links, interconnections in an interactive way. more info www. broadview.nl (sorry English translation is on its way). participation and joint sense making are important processes that happen in and around game interventions and then a tool that can store data in an organized visual form can help greatly to provide structure and overview.
We decided to have half yearly symposia with multiple themes of interest and of course we can always organize extra meetings on request. This way a larger audience can choose to participate and bring in meeting ideas. Based on the input the session will be planned. On average there is 45mins time for each topic.
1 Grant writing and research together
2 Sustainability in practice, examples on how sustainability with SGs can be brought into society on different levels
3 Modelling and Frame games by Thiagi and formative assessment mechanics
(4 Findings on longitudinal evaluation of SGs in sustainability and how to improve longitudinal measurements workshop!

Here, you find the website of this SIG: https://www.isagagamesforsustainability.com/