Abstract:

This work proposes a hybrid board game design for teaching sustainability in courses that wish to emphasize the multidisciplinary nature of sustainability. It is an integrated teaching method focusing on active learning that evolves around gamified and interconnected sustainability topics and real-world scenarios. Through reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking and research, students construct their own comprehension while they are engaged in a competitive and collaborative activity. Sustainability is covered by various sciences and specific disciplines in classrooms independently, focusing only on issues that can be clearly defined inside these disciplines (Jabareen, 2011). Jabareen argues that the lack of conceptual frameworks has led to vague themes and inconsistent goals in sustainability education, as well as established an isolated approach of the three main pillars: economy, environment and social equity (Jabareen, 2012). A collaborative multidisciplinary approach in classrooms is necessary for the effective discovery of conflicts. The gamification of the learning process places the attention on the convergence of the pillars as well as on the dependency between them.

The goal of this project is to use affordable technology to incorporate sustainability challenges through games in classrooms in ways that requires information sharing, analysis, evaluation and decision making between students and multiple disciplines, aiming the engagement of students with diverse backgrounds, skills and interests.

References:
[1] Jabareen, Y. (2011). Teaching Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Creative Education, 2, 388-392. doi: 10.4236/ce.2011.24055.
[2] Jabareen, Y. (2012). Towards a sustainability education framework: Challenges, concepts and strategies-the contribution from urban planning perspectives. Sustainability, 4(9), 2247-2269. doi: 10.3390/su4092247.

Keywords:

Gamification, board game, sustainability, play, active learning.