“Where did you learn to fight?” Gamification of an online fighting class for students at German Sport University Cologne

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany and the general restrictions on social contacts decided upon pose major challenges for institutional teaching and learning settings (Koerner & Staller, 2020a). For the German Sport University Cologne (GSU), one of the world's most renowned sport universities, due to the officially ordered shift from presence to online courses innovative and adapted solutions were in need, especially where the teaching and learning of motor and tactical skills had to be arranged. In this situation, especially for students of the GSU “self-defence” course of the summer semester 2020 the question aroused, “where do we learn to fight?”. The paper presents the conceptual framework of a regular university Krav Maga based self-defence course – “train2fight the virus” – developed specifically for this challenge, in which elements of gamification (Schell, 2017) play a driving role. Particularly, the story envisaged that besides weekly team challenges in the areas of “fitness”, “growth”, “fighting”, “solidarity” and “knowledge” students had to prepare for a strenuous fight against an unknown and highly skilled end-boss via live online trainings.