Can a carefully designed video game help students engage with complex scientific topics and support inclusive teaching? At this year’s Educating the Educators (ETE) conference in Limassol, Cyprus, InterLynk explored this question in a hands-on workshop highlighting the educational potential of digital games in STEM education.

Organised by the International Centre for STEM Education (ICSE) at the University of Education in Freiburg, the event took place on May 8–9, 2025, and brought together nearly 200 researchers, educators, and policymakers to address 21st-century challenges in STEM. The four thematic tracks - Diversity, STEM in the Digital Era, Interdisciplinarity, and Sustainability - were enriched by keynote talks from Stanford University’s Professors Jonathan Osborne and Hilda Borko, who spoke on scientific literacy and learning methodologies.

Within this vibrant context, Sabine Kienzl (Science Communicator) and Erik Martelli (Front End Developer) from Promoscience, InterLynk's partner for communication and outreach, led a one-hour workshop on May 9th. The session, titled “Engaging STEM Education Through Educational Videogames: Present and Future Possibilities,” introduced two free, multilingual games developed within the Horizon 2020 projects InterLynk and Imptox. Tissue Trek: The Scaffold Safari and Microplastic Madness: Catching PlastikPunk. These games address urgent scientific issues like micro/nanoplastic pollution and biofabrication of regenerative scaffolds - core topics of the respective projects - while also fostering coding, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

Educators, researchers, and professionals from countries across Europe (including Austria, Germany, Cyprus, Malta, and Belgium) and beyond (Israel) played the games, engaged in interactive polls, and provided feedback that will help guide future development. The session illustrated how video games - when thoughtfully designed following principles like Universal Design for Learning and constructionist pedagogy - can make science more accessible and inspiring.

For InterLynk, which focuses on developing innovative multi-material scaffolds for complex tissue repair, education is more than just knowledge sharing - it is about sparking curiosity and showing young people that cutting-edge science is not some distant, inaccessible world. By engaging students early on with the scientific, engineering, and societal dimensions of advanced biofabrication, the project aims to demystify high-level research and make it feel approachable, relevant, and even fun. InterLynk wants to inspire students to imagine themselves as scientists or engineers - showing them that science is not out of reach, but something they can be part of.

The workshop also included a sneak peek into what’s next: a new digital platform enabling students to design their own educational games. This exciting direction puts learners at the center, not just as players but as creators of STEM experiences.

A warm thank you goes out to the ETE organisers for a well-executed event and welcoming atmosphere. Events like this remind us of the importance of bridging research and education. We look forward to the next edition—with new tools, fresh insights, and continued collaboration between scientists, educators, and students.

Curious to see more from the conference? Check out the conference page, book of abstracts and full agenda.

Sabine Kienzl (above) and Erik Martelli (below) explaining the main features of Tissue Trek: The Scaffold Safari.