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said: “This is mine [game]. I have worked on it in the team”. […] He
presented the game and its functionality at the exhibition on his own to a
group of people, without me being around. I kept an eye on him from
distance. And I think it is great what he has achieved. It is […]. I only
know him from the fi rst day of this workshop and then he wasn't like that.
And … I think all the three guys of the group [participants] developed
especially self-confi dence'.
The participants are not necessarily aware of what they experience during the
workshop and which competencies were trained and applied. Furthermore, they
have little experience in managing working tasks and time frames. They quickly
invent a variety of complex game ideas, but they are rather not used in dealing with
realistic project planning according to the given time. This is where the mentor
comes in. He/she plays an important role to provide support when participants
refl ect the workshop and especially their own working manner and capacities:
Mentor:
'In my group, one [mentor] had to tell it to them. […] That was during
the feedback session … then I have told it to them. It was like “Oh,
really?” [They reacted rather surprised]. I had to point it out to all the
three of them, in what they were good at'.
The mentor is also required in the phase of free project work, which initially
overstrains the participants if they work on their own. As soon as a structure has
been defi ned, the mentors can withdraw:
Mentor:
'At the beginning, when the participants have to fi nd an idea, well, I
think, if you don't guide them a little bit and if you don't take care
that they get to the point to have an idea, and everyone agreed with
this idea, and it is mainly a realizable idea. If [the mentor doesn't
intervene], I think they would simply sit there and discuss the whole
day what was possible to do. And they would become obsessed [e.g.]
into dimensions with up to 20 levels and who knows what else. This
is a real task of the mentor, to intervene and to say: “We only have
three days, play it cool”'.
Interviewer:
'You mean the feasibility?'
Mentor:
'Yes, a little bit simpler, so that it is producible. And if this is done,
one can add something more, something more diffi cult'.
As we found, portfolio practice often is perceived by the participants as an addi-
tional task to be fulfi lled in the workshops. That's especially the case when they
develop artefacts such as interactive light object (Reimann and Bekk
2014a
,
b
) or
robots (Reimann
2014
) which attract attention rather than the portfolio work.
Usually, portfolio work is introduced in long-term scenarios rather than in 3-day
workshops. However, single cases have shown that the participants who have par-
ticipated for the second time self-initiatedly developed the portfolio without any
requests:
