The world’s higher education institutions shape the future leaders, decision-makers and intellectuals of all domains in society. However, what the future will look like for these young people is increasingly uncertain... [ view full abstract ]
The world’s higher education institutions shape the future leaders, decision-makers and intellectuals of all domains in society. However, what the future will look like for these young people is increasingly uncertain due to the effects of unsustainable practices. In its strategic plan for 2016-2020, Utrecht University (UU) states that “All students will become acquainted with sustainability issues as part of their curriculum”. UU has strong sustainability programmes in place, including the Global Sustainability Science Bachelor’s programme, the Sustainable Development Master’s programme, and various other educational activities. However, university-wide programmes on sustainability that effectively reach all students are currently lacking. One of the university’s solutions is the development and implementation of a UU sustainability game. Applied gaming is the use of gaming technology to educate players about specific topics. It allows for system analysis, the exploration of future worlds, and role-play and interaction between players. As such, applied games are an exciting tool for education on interdisciplinary and complex topics such as sustainable development. Adding competitive and/or collaborative components in applied games can also stimulate student involvement. Games designed to engage with sustainability concerns through direct experimentation with system representations can lead to enhanced system understanding, and increased understanding of the roles of societal stakeholders in tackling sustainability challenges. In the proposed game, this includes connecting diverse student backgrounds to sustainability challenges. We hypothesize that building on the practices and knowledge of staff and students of all different faculties is an ideal way developing a game that appeals to all first year students. The objective of this research is to develop a game fit to be played by all first year UU bachelor students to acquaint them with sustainability themes, through a process that is pioneering in its interdisciplinary and co-design approach. The development of the UU sustainability game started with a course, with a game-jam at its core: a week-long process that brings together teams of students with complementary skills in a competition to build game prototypes. The best prototype will be further developed by a professional game studio. This approach makes the game development process in itself participatory and educational. The learning outcomes were measured throughout the process by way of questionnaires on both the interdisciplinary learning points and the student's experience of this process. At the end of the course, the survey outcomes will be complemented with focus group interviews to obtain more detailed accounts of the educational process. Thus far in the course, interdisciplinary groups made up of UU students from different Bachelor’s programmes and Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU) students developed 18 game prototypes on sustainability themes ranging from the planetary boundaries to the principles of the commons. The survey results thus far indicate that students start with a large interest in interdisciplinary approaches, but with little knowledge of the cutting edge in other fields. Furthermore, they indicate that at various points in the course, their learning curve and confidence to be successful differed significantly. Based on the intermediate results, the interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education appears to be promising, both in terms of learning outcomes as well as for the resulting UU sustainability game.
Keywords: applied games, sustainability, student participation, interdisciplinary collaboration
2b. Educating for sustainability
