Abstract:

Spanish Universities started participating in International Cooperation for Development (ICD) in the ’90s, thanks to individual initiatives of university members. ICD is now a consolidated policy of higher education institutions. At this moment, Universities are committed with the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG) of the United Nations, which constitute the core of the sustainable development agenda from 2015. In higher education, SDG need to be considered from an integrated, multidisciplinary approach. This involves changing the minds of lecturers and students, and this change can be assisted by innovative education strategies. Gamification is one potential strategy to lever this change, considering that it has demonstrated enhance motivation and relevant learning. According to this, the aim of our two-year innovation project study was to apply gamification strategies to integrate SDG in the existing program to develop and evaluate general skills in the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) carried out by our innovation team GRIPAU (interdisciplinary higher education learning group).

First, we elaborated a correspondence table between SDG and the general skills programme established by UPV. Second, we elaborated a questionnaire based on M-Learning about the relationship of SDG and general skills. Then we selected specific subjects of different degrees (Biotechnology, and Building MSC) and developed specific activities relating to SDG and the subject. We finally evaluated the activity using the Kahoot! app.

During the first year of the project, the survey has been carried out in two subjects from two degrees, in a total of 51 students as a pilot case study. In the first activity of motivation and awareness, the SDG were introduced via a general questionnaire about their origin and reach using gamification methods.

After that, during the term, specific activities in each subject as debates and projects were used for working on deeper aspects of the SDG. At the end of the term, another survey was conducted to obtain feedback about the reach of the awareness about the different issues that the SDG deal with and their guidelines.

From the results obtained in this stage, 76% of the answers of the initial survey have been correct while in the final surveys these were 60%. The 94% of the students surveyed are aware of having learned something new and 90% would recommend this activity. The 81% of the students have had a positive attitude in front of a 15% neutral and a 4% being negative.

We can conclude that gamification has a high potential to integrate SDG and general skills in higher education. In addition, it increases student’s motivation and comprehension of current and futures challenges. This pilot experience will be expanded to more students and other subjects of different areas during the following academic year in order to further evaluate this potential.

Keywords:

Gamification, SDG, general skills.