Charlotte Conn

Purpose
Risk is a core element of counselling. The training of risk detection, assessment and management is therefore essential to ensuring effective and ethical practice. This paper aims to outline an applied game for training risk assessment skills.

Design/methodology/approach
The gamification of education and training aims to strengthen engagement with serious material and enhance learning and consolidation by using a motivating medium. This showcase presents “Perspective: Counselling Simulator”, a gamified tool for developing and assessing risk assessment skills in trainee counsellors in the UK.

Findings
The authors present a showcase of the game and its development, plans for further validation and evaluation.

Practical implications
Following ongoing evaluation, the game is intended to be a scalable and accessible tool for trainee counsellors to develop knowledge and self-efficacy in relation to a vital professional skill.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, “Perspective: Counselling Simulator” is the first of its kind as a gamified education and training tool for risk assessment in counselling.

Disruption to higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic caused several challenges for university students, as they were forced to adjust to new teaching and learning styles. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted university students' learning experiences and education. This study took a phenomenological methodological approach in an attempt to understand students' experiences from their own perspective. Semi-structured interviews were then carried out with 19 university students from the UK between 9 May 2022 - 26 June 2022. The main themes that emerged through thematic analysis were: (1) A lack of engagement with online learning; (2) Changes in attitudes towards learning; (3) A lack of practical learning opportunities; (4) Changes to academic support; (5) Limited interaction with peers; (6) Implications for health and well-being. This study provides a deeper student-centred understanding of university students' lived experiences with online learning during the pandemic, revealing underexplored contextual, emotional and relational dimensions of online learning. These rich qualitative findings not only enhance current understanding of higher education during the pandemic but can be drawn upon to shape digitised learning moving forward. As we are progressing in an era of increasing digitised learning, these findings contribute towards laying the groundwork for future policy and practice within higher education.

PurposeSelf-efficacy is the bridge between theoretical knowledge of counselling and practical application of effective techniques (Akinlolu and Chukwudi, 2019). Furthermore, risk-assessment and management are fundamental components of counselling training and self-efficacy in these areas is central to ethical practice. Gamification represents an opportunity to increase motivation encouraging users to engage with serious content via an entertaining medium. This study aims to present two studies concerning an outline of the development process and an initial evaluation of "Perspective: Counselling Simulator", a gamified training tool for developing and enhancing self-efficacy in risk-assessment skills in trainee counselling students in the UK. Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the development and initial user-evaluation of "Perspective", as well as an initial evaluation of the game's capacity to deliver risk-assessment education in a group of UK-based trainee counsellors to British Association for Counselling and Psychology (BACP) standards. FindingsFirstly, mid-development assessment of a prototype-version of the game produced a good system usability score and positive user-feedback, while identifying areas for further improvement. Secondly, data relating to an initial evaluation of the efficacy of the game suggest that the game in its current form is significantly improved in terms of system usability and produces descriptive, albeit not statistically significant improvements to self-reported self-efficacy. Additional feedback was provided by users and further development and evaluation is planned. Originality/ValueThis paper represents, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the first of its kind in developing and evaluating a gamified tool with accessibility and scalability for teaching and consolidating risk-assessment skills of UK counselling students in-line with BACP standards.