Ultimate Assent - Best game for teaching and team development?

[tsaksa]

While it is still way too early to judge how well this game will do in actual competition or for spectator enjoyment, it is already getting my vote as perhaps the best game ever for building teams, teaching technical and analytical skills, making design tradeoffs, and inspiring students. As they say, if you learn best by making mistakes, we are certainly learning a lot right now. I know that I have not been around long enough to see many build seasons, but that is my somewhat novice opinion.

This year’s game sets out a huge challenge for the students, but not ,IMHO, as some have suggested, too much of a challenge. The conflicting requirements of this game, and the tradeoffs that students are being forced to make, seem highly reflective of real world engineering challenges. And it seems to have more conflicts in the requirements than many if not all previous challenges. Also, just like many real world problems, the closer you look, the more complex the game seems to become. Of course, I also expect that it will be an exciting game to watch with Frisbees flying, robots scurrying for disks, defending goals, climbing huge towers, and perhaps (unfortunately) even an eventual fall or two.

So far this season I have been seeing a very positive reaction in our team as it takes on this challenge. Much more so than in some of the previous years. And the fact that some of the powerhouse teams seem taken aback by this game (even if just for a moment) seems to make it even more inspiring. It may just be that our particular team has some unique chemistry this year, but I think it is at least partly the game that is doing it. How about other teams out there? Do you find this game a better teaching/learning experience than some previous games? Are any of you seeing the kind of positive reaction from your team to this game that I am, or is it just my imagination?