Golden Pineapple Awards ™ – a student contest for designing learning games.

The Student Contest for the Golden Pineapple Awards is focused on developing awareness among young game designers and creative people and companies of the potential of games as learning material. Originally starting as an educational game design course created by Professor Maja & Paul Pivec, the concept has taught over 300 information design students at the University of Applied Sciences Joanneum in Austria. They wanted to introduce this topic to the coming generation of potential game designers and make them aware of this new discipline along with its specifics. The challenge for students was to create a concept proposal for a publisher of educational games. Based on the course work and results, Pivec and Pivec analysed how students perceived the area of educational games for the use of teaching and as a career path. The course culminates with the annual award ceremony.

Golden Pineapple Award™  is a yearly event presented in 4 categories: the best in show, the most innovative technology, the best educational potential and the highest marketing potential. Golden Pineapple Award™ is a student contest for games with educational and learning topics, held at FH Joanneum in Austria, at the end of the winter semester. Details about past awards can be seen for 2007 and 2008, and the recent 2009 winning concepts can be viewed here.

With the ENGAGE International Student Contest this award will be open to all students across the globe who will be invited to submit their educational game designs following the already defined structure of the competition. A nominated jury from industry experts and educationalists decide the awards.