Franklin Sixth Form College - developing an esports suite

Franklin Sixth Form College Grimsby serves the young people of North East Lincolnshire, with a current student population of over 1,650. It is the only sixth form college in the area and is recognised as the best provider in the region for 16-19 progress in education.

Franklin's unique selling point is its wide variety of courses, allowing students to select any programme of study that suits their interests, alongside a wealth of enrichment opportunities offering a wide range of experiences to students.

Project Background

As the esports industry continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK and internationally, Franklin Sixth Form College was keen to add this course to its curriculum offering. Having first being made aware of the BTEC Esports course by the BTEC organisation directly, Franklin surveyed its staff and student population to determine if there was an interest. After confirming significant interest, the college set about planning - both for the course itself and the infrastructure required to deliver it - an aspect that Franklin wanted to ensure that it achieved first time so as to minimise expense, disruption and accelerate course delivery.

Project Approach

Franklin Sixth Form College’s existing media department has industry-standard equipment, featuring dedicated Mac suites and recording rooms, so it needed to ensure that the esports suite also met this same high standard. While it was outside its scope to build an entire esports building Franklin was keen to have a similar dedicated esports suite that delivered on five fronts.

To provide a suitable learning environment - a dedicated esports suite that ensures students have access to high-quality gaming equipment and a suitable environment for playing and practicing.

Enhances the learning experience - the suite needs to be able to be set up for live tournaments and competitions, allowing students to experience the excitement of competitive gaming and develop their skills in a real-world setting. This would further support collaboration and teamwork facilitating group work and project-based learning, encouraging students to work together and build strong teamwork skills.

Encourages hands-on learning - the suite must provide students with hands-on learning opportunities, enabling them to experiment with different gaming hardware, peripherals and software to develop their technical skills.

Allows the provision for esports enrichment - the intention is to encourage competition in the British Esports Association student championships and offer an ‘Open Play‘ enrichment where students can book machines after college to play games.

Make provision for future expansion into games development - due to the high power of the gaming PCs there could be a logical pathway into further games related courses.

Project Results

The completed esports suite has proved a great success in its suitability for delivering the BTEC esports course. The college has also found that the dedicated space and its differentiation to a normal IT room in its styling, has increased student engagement - not only in esports itself but in other subjects delivered in this space.

It also provides an excellent marketing opportunity, as prospective students and students from surrounding secondary areas can experience a hands-on environment that they will remember, following a visit. The room always elicits a wow from visitors especially in a catchment area such as the college’s, with large numbers of low income students from a region that performs very poorly on the social mobility index.

The Scan Partnership

Franklin Sixth Form College chose Scan as it is very experienced in the areas of gaming and enthusiast hardware compared to traditional organisational-focused system providers. Additionally, with the exception of the fixtures and fittings it was possible to source all the equipment needed for the entire room including PC systems, gaming monitors, peripherals and gaming chairs, from a single provider.

Project Wins

Increased student engagement with dedicated esports space

Increases in BTEC esports course enrolments

Flagship esports premises for events and marketing

Featuring comprehensive warranties and being competitively priced also helped as due to the scope of the project, additional quotes were required for comparison - however Scan was still the partner of choice.

"Exceptionally easy to deal with, from the first quote through to delivery of the final room and beyond, our account manager was a direct phone away and always available to help as the design scope changed throughout the planning and funding process."