Högskolan i Skövde

This paper presents and evaluates a new educa-tional tool and a model for learning theory and practice ofgame development, by involving geographically separated andculturally different industrial and academic organizations. Wepropose a TRIAD education model, which is as an extensionto the conventional project-based learning, by uniting industrystaff, faculty members, and students in an online discussionspace. This model is a two-phase cyclic model where in Phase-1)industry members and academic staff discuss the progress of PBLtransparently, showing the cross-cultural gaps and advising howto solve them, and in Phase-2) students make progress on theprojects. Additionally, the TRIAD model adopts asynchronoustext messaging as a core communication method, which issuitable for a multi-timezone situation, as well as exchangesof self-reviews from students and feedback from instructors.The online space not only facilitates interns in overcomingthe hurdles represented by the gaps between the industry andacademia, but it also visualizes the students’ implicit educationalprogress by periodically analyzing all stored data by applyingquantitative text analysis methods. This paper shows the result ofan empirical study by utilizing this TRIAD model and analyticstool conducted at a large-scale Japanese game company withover 2,000 employees focusing on two students from the divisionof game development at a university in Sweden. We applied aquantitative text analysis tool for this model during an on-goinginternship program to clarify how students change their thoughtsand behaviors by acquiring cross-cultural professionalism in thegame industry. In addition, the result indicates that this TRIADmodel is resilient, even under the COVID-19 epidemic situationdue to its text-based approach.