Academia worldwide acts like a human development agency to literate people to fulfill market demands. Alongside teaching humanity, values, and morality. And this trend is continuing from thousands of years to shape our societies. But it also changed positions with the flow of time facilitated by innovations into the curriculums. Which helped the world come forward this far to change the game!
In the modern world, education becomes a business tool that brings affluence in people’s thought processes. This also replaced traditional knowledge by timelines and usefulness. That abetted the world to reach such technological advancement. We are living an era where digital applications have carried rapid change in our daily life. And give birth to many industries based on our consuming habits and needs. And in the education system, digital components widely integrated with traditional education and developed variety as everything goes online.
Like other fields, gaming is a modern-day stimulation, creating millions of enthusiasts who use it as a tool of entertainment. The recent success of the game products has made an enormous industry worldwide as game developers count billions. It has a broad prospect that leads the education institutions to be ambitious. By attracting students to a new career pathway. Like other countries, Bangladesh also has a small and unrecognized gaming industry. Still, from the education end, the state sees nothing to be happy.
Experts say!
Experts in many sectors excavated the way Bangladesh education system heading is not something encouraging for the country’s industries. As the academic curriculum taught at the public universities is old like 60 years. The syllabus doesn’t change as much as the world advancing towards. The main reason behind this backwardness is the lack of collaborations among the industry and academia.
Demonstration says that when a graduate comes from the university to serve an industry, most of them are seems nothing but a child according to their work efficiency. So, companies hire them, train them, pays them to take their skill at a certain level. But what happened after? The bird flies to another sky for the sake of betterment and the companies see their efforts going to be wasted. So, it’s time for the authorities comprising government, private sector, and academia to rethink that something has to be done to help each other.
According to market analysis, the global gaming industry is worth 180 billion, and it’s proliferating. Like other countries, Bangladesh has the same potential to do well in this business if all the concerns act like a pro for this industry. Like the government and the private sector, academia has to play a vital role in producing a human resource. Nevertheless, academia has no footprints in this arena; the game development companies and experts suggested some essentials for the education sector to include. These are:
Introducing game education in exiting universities:
With the flow of digital advancement around the world, the science and technology-based and general universities are launching new departments in their faculties so that they can generate talents for the industries. Likewise, game developers think this is high time for the public and private universities to introduce separate departments for the game education as there’s a vast young generation who are fond of the game. They might have visons on the gaming industry.
If existing universities open gaming education, it would be a worthy investment for the future. Because most young minds love to play games and a significant portion of them want to study it as part of their curriculum. So, if we can provide them proper education, Bangladesh’s game industry will rise in the near future.
Separate university for game development:
The government is working to establish 28 hi-tech par, ks to create job opportunities for jobless graduates. At the same time, some of them are already started operations. Similarly, the government can build at least one support where enthusiasm will learn about game design, game art, computer animation, mobile development, and so on. Primarily, local companies can provide resource persons to teach students.
In Finland, currently, over 50 educational institutions that provide game education at all educational levels. So, it could be an example for our country to start the journey towards building a game development industry by teaching programming or game design.”
Starring master’s courses on gaming:
Staring maters course in science and technology and engineering backed universities would be another good idea for those who wish to continue higher study in game design and production studies. As it is known that the game studies are a practical field, so the students could shine in this industry rather than chasing for public jobs.
University and company collaboration:
Public or private universities who are interested in gaming education can make partnerships with the local companies as resource partners to run the department through them primarily. But for the advanced level of study, partnering with foreign universities could be another way to make it successful. Though it might seem costly, the teachers can take online classes to reduce the operations costs. In that case, Asian countries that are efficient in game development can be connected and partnered quickly.
Asian countries like Singapore, China, Japan, Malaysia, and even India have a good reputation in gaming education and their industry earning billions. And some of the neighboring countries have a decent tie with Bangladesh, it will be easy to convince to support our industry for flourishing further by providing education backing,” stated Mr. Ershad.
Creating a pole of talent:
Local companies often face hurdles finding out the proper talent that the industry needs. In this respect, the Bangladesh Association of Software and I. Imation Services (BASIS) and Bangladesh Association of Call Center & Outsourcing (BACCO) can collaborate with the gaming companies along with academia to find out talents and train them for the job market. It could be wise if a fund created for boosting their skills.
If mother associations come forward in association with the universities, we are ready to cooperate and help the resource person take game developers’ skill to the next level. Inter partnership between the companies and the universities can be an asset to take this forward.