Learners to Leaders: Alf Inge takes advantage of the small class size of 30 in his Game Design course to bring the Learners to Leaders pedagogy to life. He challenges learners to create and host their own kahoots, giving fellow students the opportunity to give honest and constructive feedback in a playful setting – a true win/win situation.

The K!’ademy Award Ceremony: Break out the bow ties and cocktail gowns – in his grandest operation yet, Alf Inge hosts a video awards show in his Software Architecture class that showcases his students’ mobile game projects, which they then vote on using a star rating system. How? First, students create a 2 minute YouTube video summarising their project, then Alf Inge compiles all of the submissions into a kahoot, and finally uses the answer fields for 1 to 4 star ratings. It’s hugely validating motivator – and did we mention there’s popcorn? Genius.

Tips for creating learning games that attract thousands of players

With wide appeal and engaging imagery, Alf Inge’s social trivia kahoot games have attracted players from over 10,000 cities around the world, and his top 10 kahoots alone have been played by over 1.6 million people!

We zoomed in on one of his most popular games – “Who is this“, a quick 9-question quiz with gradually revealed photos of famous people. Would you believe that single game has been played by over 210,000 people in 4,000 cities?

How does he do it? Aside from choosing topics guaranteed to have wide appeal, Alf Inge’s top tips should make it easy for anyone to create high quality learning games that attract players.

Tip #1: Planning is everything!!

Sketch it out first, make notes, and do your research before starting to create your kahoot online.

“I spent a lot of time researching the most popular games, and experimented with many variables to create content that naturally attracted more players. Quizzes that are too hard don’t gain much popularity. For a game to attract the most players it needs to appeal to all ages and abilities, which is why topics with a wide appeal always do phenomenally – such as Disney Trivia.”

Tip #2: Source or create great media.

Great images and GIFs really go a long way when it comes to spicing up a game and luring in more players! Once he spends time researching the topic and questions, along with plausible answers, he focuses on creating a mixture of media to best illustrate the story he’d like to tell through his kahoot. For GIFs and slow-reveal effects, he likes to use Keynote to create the individual image frames, then export to a QuickTime file, and use Photoshop for the finishing touches. (watch his image reveal GIF tutorial here)

Tip #3: Timing and variety is important.

“For easy or short answers I usually allow 20 seconds, for moderate difficulty I use 30 seconds, and for trickier questions like puzzles I set the timer to one minute.”

Gaming for Social Good: Alf Inge Wang’s work on NORAD’s #EduApp4Syria

Through his work with Kahoot!, Alf Inge demonstrated time and time again the positive impact that a well-designed game can have on learning… so it came as no surprise when he was asked to be the Games Expert and Technical Coordinator for a unique gaming competition for social good: NORAD’s #EduApp4Syria.

“Sadly, 2.8 million Syrian refugee children don’t have access to school. With education being at the heart of their chance of success in life, this Norwegian Innovation Competition is allowing us to find smart ways for those children to learn their mother tongue – Arabic.”

In January he visited the Syrian border of Turkey to speak with refugees:

“Getting to talk to Syrian refugee parents was pretty amazing – and they brought home a fact about gaming that’s inherently special – its emotional benefit. These children are all in an extremely difficult environment where everyone is trying their best to cope, so giving them something fun and engaging is so much more than a novelty – it’s a means of survival. Being just a kid – not a refugee, not a victim – it can be tough. And it’s important we help address this the best we can.”

“ALL of them had a smartphone – even the poorest people. They used it to contact their friends and relatives, and lots of kids were playing games on their smartphones.”

As for the content itself, the challenge they’ve set prospective game designers is to create a lightweight, Android-first offline game that supports the basics in learning a language. It could be a game designed to help children recognize and trace letters of the alphabet and blend symbols, for example.

And that wraps up this instalment!

What a treat to have such a passionate, talented person as part of the team, and to see his impact outside of Kahoot! as well. We’ll be hovering over Alf Inge’s shoulder watching the new game modes unfold and will be counting down the days ’til we can share them with you – watch this space!

Later in our Meet the K!rew series we’ll be meeting the co-founders, sneaking a peek under the hood with our geekiest game developers, and chatting with our ‘people’ people about their favorite school visits. Got a burning question for our team? Tweet @getkahoot and we’ll sneak the best questions into the interviews.

Play some of Alf Inge Wang’s kahoots:

Click here for all games by Alf Inge Wang or try some of our favourites below!