Abstract:

In Spain, Universities began to participate in International Cooperation for Development (ICD) in the ’90s, mainly thanks to personal initiatives of university members. Nowadays ICD is a consolidated policy for higher education institutions. At this moment, Universities are committed with the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG) of the United Nations, which have constituted the core of the sustainable development agenda since 2015. SDG need to be considered from a multidisciplinary and integrated approach, especially in higher education. The accomplishment of the deal needs to involve a change in the minds of lecturers and students, and innovative education strategies can help. Gamification is an important strategy to drive this change, due to the capabilities demonstrated to achieve deep learning and motivation improvement. The two-year innovation project applies gamification strategies to integrate SDG into the existing program with the aim of developing and evaluating “General Skills” (GS) in the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). The project is carried out by our innovation team GRIPAU (interdisciplinary higher education learning group).

On the first year of project, the pilot case study was carry out over 51 students of Biotechnology and Building MSC. The results showed the gamification as a powerful tool to integrate SDG and general skills in Higher Education. One time the pilot case study was concluded;, the methodology was adjusted and the experience was extended to the other subjects within the project.

The project second year plan includes applying the methodology to 255 students of 7 different subjects of Bachelor Degrees and MSC of Engineering, Architecture, Building Construction and Biotechnology, both in fall and spring term.

The methodology consists of planning of different activities through the term. First, a motivation and awareness activity is carried out to introduce the SDG through a general questionnaire about the origin and limits using the gamification tool such as Kahoot.

During the term, specific activities are developed with the aims of getting deeper knowledge about the SDG. The range for the activities is wide from specific projects to debates. Finally, at the end of the term a final survey is conducted via gamification to get feedback on the level of awareness of the different issues addressed by the SDG and their guidelines.

The results obtained with the first data collection activity, showed 69% of correct answers while in the final surveys were 62%. Similar results for the different schedule data collection within the pilot case study with 76% and 60%, respectively, although the total number of students in the final surveys was only 135 because some subjects are developed on the spring semester. The results on the second-year project are equivalent, with less correct answers for the final test than for the initial one. About the subjective impressions of the activities, only 20% of the students gave feedback. All of them reported that the activities were very fun, learning effective and they would recommend the tool.

In conclusion, we can affirm that the gamification tools have a high potential to integrate SDG and GS in higher education. Also, gamification increases the motivation for current and future challenges in the higher education community.

Keywords:

SDG, Gamification, General Skills, Higher Education.