Integration of Esports in Educational Innovation: A Design-Based Research Approach

To meet the growing and innovative career opportunities in technology and sport, particularly in electronic sports, both practitioners and scholars must engage in an iterative process to analyze, design, and evaluate educational interventions and innovations with design-based research. Being in a young academic discipline, sport management faculty shape the next generation of practitioners, so the purpose of this research was to examine faculty’s openness to innovation through an andragogical teaching approach and the incorporation of the business of electronic sports within the curriculum. Through a two-part study, results revealed that faculty had a balanced teacher- and learner-focused approach, which demonstrated that advancement of electronic sports can transcend all types of faculty in a young field. Implications from this novel, yet extremely relevant, research will help both practitioners and scholars innovatively and collaboratively navigate institutional complexities.