Students from several European countries have jointly developed innovative game concepts for Bremen's cultural sector. The 30 or so students worked in interdisciplinary teams at Hochschule Bremen (HSB) - City University of Applied Sciences on projects supported by regional partners from the fields of culture and art. The winning team developed a smartphone game that allows users to discover and interactively experience art in public spaces.
The workshop in the summer semester of 2025 was one of the results of the three-year cooperation project ‘IGNITION’. It connects European universities and promotes innovative teaching formats. The intensive workshop week in the creative place FreiRaum@HSB and the hybrid final event offered students a unique opportunity to gain practical experience in game development, intercultural collaboration and challenge-based learning. The event was organised by Professor Andreas Teufel from the Media Informatics course at Faculty 4 - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at HSB. ‘The project was a proof-of-concept for our new didactic concepts, which combine hybrid teaching with intensive workshop work,’ explains Andreas Teufel.
The positive feedback from the students emphasises the success: ‘It was one of the best courses I've attended at HSB,’ says one student looking back. Someone else from the workshop commented: "The concept is great and much more fun than the traditional course structure I'm used to. I really enjoyed the one week of the workshop as it allowed you to fully concentrate on your project with little to no distractions. It felt like a great experience and not just another course."
Students from the three STARS EU partners Instituto Politechnico de Bragança in Portugal, Hanze University in Groningen (Netherlands) and HSB were involved. They were joined by exchange students from Norway, Turkey and Luxembourg, who are spending their summer semester at HSB. They came from the Media Informatics, Design, Computer Science and Business Administration (BWL) degree programmes. An online phase in April and May was followed by an intensive week of workshops at Hochschule Bremen in June at FreiRaum@HSB. The event officially ended at the end of June with a hybrid closing event.
The Günter Grass Foundation Bremen, the Verein zur Förderung des Welterbes Rathaus und Roland in Bremen, the Städtische Galerie Bremen and the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus took part as partners from Bremen's cultural scene.
IGNITION is a research project of the STARS EU partners Hanze Groningen (Netherlands, lead partner), Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal) and Hochschule Bremen (HSB) together with the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford (Ireland). The acronym IGNITION stands for European DIGital Literacy Coalition for Inclusion, Collaboration aNd InnovaTION. ‘The aim of IGNITION is to provide our lecturers with concrete didactic tools and technological support to enable curricular teaching in international and hybrid settings,’ says project leader Professor Andreas Teufel, Dean of Studies at Faculty 4 - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. ‘This will not replace our core expertise of teaching in small groups and practical tasks in the seminar room and laboratory, but it will expand our possibilities.’
