The InnovatED Story
It all started on a car ride in June 2008. InnovatED CEO Jason Ready and CDO Karl Arne Dalsaune were on their way home from their jobs as vocational IT teachers at Heimdal Upper Secondary School. During the drive from Heimdal, they were discussing how they could best motivate their students. Jason shared an idea he had about structuring the school like a video game, where students would play to reach new levels in each subject and gain benefits in their school day when they leveled up. On that car ride, The Level System was born. They quickly presented the idea to their colleagues at the school, including future InnovatED CTO Knut Eivind Brennhaug, and they started using the system the following school year.
The Level System was a system where students earned points by completing assignments at school. By accumulating points, they could reach new levels, and with each new level came new freedoms. This worked well for individual subjects, but we wanted to create a system that could be used across all subjects, regardless of assessments.
Thus, Heimdall’s Quest was born. We created a system based on role-playing games, where students had to collaborate in teams with different roles. Each role had unique abilities that could be unlocked by earning points. We expanded the points system so that teachers could award points for all activities in the classroom, not just assignments. This allowed us to use the system to further motivate students to be more active in class, to help each other, and to take responsibility.
In this first version of Heimdall’s Quest, all abilities were tied to roles. A Viking could protect their teammates and was allowed to eat and drink during class. A Skald could heal others and listen to music in class. All of this was managed through spreadsheets in Google Docs, where teachers registered students’ points and abilities.
Over time, this became cumbersome and took up too much teaching time. We realized that we needed a more streamlined system. Two resourceful students created a prototype, and we ended up hiring one of them, InnovatED shareholder Åsmund Stavdahl, to develop a web-based solution for managing Heimdall’s Quest, where students could interact with the system themselves.
By the autumn of 2015, the new system was in operation at Heimdal Upper Secondary School, as well as Narvik Upper Secondary School. Other former students joined the project, contributing graphics, making the system more visual and engaging for the students.
Through our work with Heimdall’s Quest we have ourselves become more motivated to work on innovation in the classroom. Both Jason and Karl Arne, as well as our friend Madeleine Loraas, have written Master’s theses about the system. We have also given presentations at several major education conferences, both about HQ and other topics related to innovation in the classroom.
In 2019, we founded InnovatED AS, with the help of our colleague Bendik Dahl Thrana, as a vehicle for further development of Heimdall’s Quest as well as our interest in innovative educational practices. Jason started working on Erasmus+ projects through his contacts at NTNU and gained an extensive international network that allowed us to share Heimdall’s Quest with schools and universities in multiple European countries.
Between 2020 and 2024 we got busy with our day-to-day jobs, as there was a restructuring of the vocational IT learning programs, and we got to be part of building the new IT & media program from the ground up. We of course brought Heimdall’s Quest and our philosophy of innovation into the new program.
In 2025 we were presented with the opportunity to become an Erasmus+ small scale partner, and we are therefore focusing on that going forward. We also welcomed our newest team member and former colleague, Geir Haugen Vikan. Our experience from vocational IT education and the Norwegian apprenticeship programs as well as our passion for innovation in education make us an ideal partner for international projects. We are excited for what the future will bring!