DiversiSMILES: Forever a work in progress

Abstract

This article is a description of and a reflection upon the development of a gamification project on humour. Its creation was originally undertaken in collaboration with three students in the Intercultural Management (ICM) program at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France: Keizo Suzuki from Japan, Aigerim Daribayeva from Kazakhstan, and Stephan van de Ven from the Netherlands. This diverse team, in a for-credit project as part of their ICM master’s program, worked under the direction of David Bousquet, who, with his colleague Alex Frame, had already supervised student teams on similar projects developing other games that have been published and are now being used for both organizational training and academic courses. These projects were accomplished in collaboration with George Simons International, a sole proprietorship that initiated the diversophy® game series and which provided coaching, editing, and final production. After concluding this project, and in preparation for writing this article, Suzuki, Daribayeva, Van de Ven, and Bousquet were asked to provide a brief report of their insights and learning as well as to describe some of their experiences in conceiving, planning, and implementing the humour project. These reflections are interspersed throughout the article.