Plateaus, Towers and Shrines: Man Met Rise’s Open-World Design Principles

Dr John Lean and Dr Mark Peace, Manchester Metropolitan University

Man Met’s innovative Rise programme enhances graduate outcomes by encouraging students to draw together bespoke programmes of on- and off-line co-curricular experiences. In this way, it reconfigures the conventional delivery model of higher education by placing much of the control over the learning process back in the hands of students; they are responsible not just for planning their Rise learning journey but defining its significance and value. This, in turn, requires different forms of learning, which bring both new opportunities and new challenges for students and educators.

In this session, we explore how we put the Rise philosophy into action via the design principles of open-world videogames. Though not a game, Rise incorporates metaphorical features that are directly inspired by open world games, in particular The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and we will explore some of these features to explain how they influence students’ journeys through Rise. Using this extended metaphor, we will also discuss the emerging implications of this ‘open world’ delivery model for HE pedagogy elsewhere.