Abertay 25 plus is a legacy programme built on Abertay 25 – a skills development project that encourages school pupils to collectively research stories using archives, and present their findings in creative ways. The process is well suited to a cross-curricular setting across Arts, Humanities, and Technologies, as this project demonstrated.

Computing Studies teacher, Mr Christie, from St Paul’s Academy, worked with Abertay University to deliver this to a class taking the NPA Games Development course.

The group was made up of students between the ages of 15-18 years old with differing levels of ability. With the NPA Games Development course being largely vocational and practical, it was identified that the Abertay 25 plus project would be perfect to fit in with the curriculum and inspire the young people with theme ideas for the game they were asked to develop.

To begin with, Abertay University Archivist Ruaraidh Wishart and a postgraduate volunteer introduced the class to the story of Abertay’s first computer bought in 1966, the Elliott 4100, through various archive materials. The class were encouraged to ask questions about the documents they were given and carry out their own research to find answers.

As they found out more in their research, many in the class became interested in the story of the clerkess that operated the computer, and the technological and social challenges she faced at that time. She became a major character for their video games, alongside technological and environmental features of computing in the 1960s – the paper punch tape used to feed programmes into the computer; the massive size of it compared to the computers we have now; and the need to keep its surroundings clean in case the heat generated by the circuits set fire to dust in the environment.

  As part of the video game development process, pupils were then asked to design their game, sound, and artwork inspired by their research. In the end, the students produced video games using a variety of design applications and various style genres.

Overall, the project was a huge success as pupils completed the project brief set out in their curriculum and they developed valuable skills for the future – team working, researching and creative thinking, as well as skills relevant for careers in computer games development and heritage.