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Gaming for change

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04 June 2021
Educational project

Gaming for change

This project aims to develop a Sustainability Game for all bachelor programmes of Utrecht University, over all 3 years of study. The game will be based on successful tests with a recently built prototype of a sustainability game for first year Geosciences students: Utrecht2040. In this project, the faculties of Geosciences, Humanities, and Law, Economics and Governance will work together closely to establish a broad and balanced sustainability game.

Background

A sustainable future is both dependent on and of the utmost importance for all people living on the planet. Therefore, the young minds of the future that Utrecht University (UU) aims to educate should have foundational knowledge about sustainability.

According to core UU policy, this should include learning about the basic concepts of sustainability and how sustainability relates to the students’ education and career paths.

For this purpose, we have developed and tested a pilot version of a location-based, multiplayer serious game: Utrecht2040, in preparation for a full version of the game outlined in this proposal.

Serious or applied gaming is the use of gaming technology to teach participants about certain topics. Games are excellent tools to use in interdisciplinary topics as they can allow for the engagement with and analysis of complex systems, the exploration of future worlds, and role-play and interaction between players (Ratan & Ritterfeld, 2009).

Figure 1. Screen shot of Game Utrecht 2040

Figure 1. Game Utrecht2040

A pilot version of the sustainability game Utrecht2040 has been developed by our interdisciplinary team with support from the faculty of Geosciences and Educate-it, in collaboration with game-developer IJsfontein. This pilot version aims to teach 1st year Geoscience bachelor students about sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Utrecht2040 offers an experience focused on direct engagement with the city of Utrecht, where students can capture and share their sustainable future versions of the city – creating the basis of exchange and engagement between students.

Goals and expected results

The aim of this proposal is to develop the serious game “Utrecht2040” that will teach all UU bachelor students about sustainability across the 3 bachelor years, focusing on the UN SDGs, interdisciplinarity & worldviews, and the inclusion of sustainability in the students’ future career.

The project aims for four main results:

Development of the sustainability game Utrecht2040 for all UU first year bachelor students with full functionality, based on a pilot version developed in 2019.

Implementation of the sustainability game in all bachelor programmes at the UU.

Make the sustainability game Utrecht2040 suitable for second and third year bachelor students across UU. With the game being a yearly exercise, the learning of and reflection on sustainability will enlarge.
– Second year: challenges around interdisciplinarity and worldviews.
– Third year: challenges around sustainability in relation to the students’ future career.

Evaluation of the learning outcomes with regards to sustainability, resulting in an evidence based study of this entire process.

Results and Output

Besides initial aimes and expected results of the project (can be found in ‘output’), other findings can be presented in this stage of the project.

Many bachelor programmes at Utrecht University were contacted. Of the programmes, many have indicated that they would like to play the game as part of their curriculum, often either as part of the introduction, tutoring or mentoring, or as part of a course. The result is that every year, about a 1000 students are playing Utrecht2040. This is less than the initial goal (which was that all UU students would play the game as part of their curriculum), but the interest from both faculty and students is still increasing. Hopefully, the number of students playing this game every year will increase further. The game is played by students from Utrecht University, UMCU, EWUU alliance as well as abroad in the CHARM-EU alliance, and it is also played by second and third year bachelor students.

In the first two years of the project, students could only get into the game using their Solis-id and the game was very limitedly available outside of the UU. In the third year, to increase the scalability and usability of the game outside of Utrecht University, students no longer require a Solis-id to play the game. Students without a Solis-id can directly login the app.

Since the beginning of the project, there has been interest from other educational institutions (HU, Delft, Eindhoven) and from societal stakeholders (i.e. city of Utrecht). Due to change in accessability to the game in the beginning of 2023 (no longer needing a Solis-id), outside stakeholders are able to play the game. Now, there is an increasing interest in playing the Utrecht2040 game, for instance in secondary education.

A good example is the succesful participation in the NWA-project in collaboration with Stichting Technotrend. The NWA-project investigates eco-anxiety among secondary school students and minimalisation of this through different tools and interventions. Utrecht2024 is adopted as one of these tools. This adoption allowed for investment in making the game more suitable for secondary education by creating three new nano-lectures for secondary geography pupils. These new nano-lectures will be developed together with Technotrend in Dutch. The topics covered by these new nanolectures are: sustainable food and foodwaste, climate adaptation & ecology and lastly mobility. The new nanolectures will be used after the summer 2023 and are currently being developed. Next, Museon has also expressed interest in using the Utrecht2040 game in their educational programme.

The data is currently still being analysed, as  enough post-covid data is now available. Additionally, help to analyse the pictures that have been uploaded was asked.

It is an important question whether the impact of the game is sustainable. However, as the students that play the game are de-identified, it is not possible to track students after playing the game. Once it is implemented in year 2 and 3, it will be tried to follow students over time. This is because students that log into the game for the 2nd or 3rd time will be remembered and get the same de-identified code to follow them over time. This opens up these possibilities.

Disseminations

A game website has been created where publications, video’s and explanations on how to download the app are shared. Here, the journal paper by Astrid Magnus et al. (2022) called “Picture the future , play the present: Re-Imagining sustainable cities through a large-scale location-based game” is also shared.

Teacher manuals have been created which explain the steps needed to plan a game session. An information video about the Utrecht2040 game can also be found on the website. The aim is to create an automated post-game presentation. This way, game moderators do not have to be present, and teachers can do the reflection and the award ceremony with the students themselves. This will help very much with the imbedding into the UU.

  • 2020 –2022 Utrecht SummerSchool Ecogames, Utrecht University
  • 2021 Utrecht2040 nomination for the annual Pathways to Sustainability Award for the three best transdisciplinary research projects at Utrecht University.
  • 2021 Keynote ‘onderwijsparade’, on challenge based learning using a gaming approach (Utrecht2040), Utrecht University
  • 2021 Organised a session to play the game during the Pathways to Sustainability Conference week (on Monday 11 October).
  • 2021 Europeana2021, Invited lecture on ‘Gaming towards a Sustainable Future’. Online conference with over 100 participants in our session.
  • 2019 DUB interview about Utrecht2040

Future direction of the project

The game will be available to all UU students and beyond. A consolidation grant was received to work on better (and hopefully permanent) embedding of the game within Utrecht University. The grant will be used to further increase the scalability of the game by automatising game play results for teachers. At this point teachers rely on us to provide a game session. By automatizing the last step of the game, it will be easier for teachers to play the game autonomously. Additionally, different business cases will be worked out to work on the embedding of the game inside the UU. For this has already been spoken to Educate-IT, the innovation manager of CAT and a process advisor.

References

  • Mangnus, A.C., K.T. Rebel,J.M. Vervoort, R. Dotinga, E. Hoogendoorn, P.P.J. Driessen, M.A. Hajer. (2022). Picture the future, play the present: Re-imagining sustainable cities through a large-scale location-based game, Futures, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102858.
  • Rebel, K., J. Kasch, R.A. Dotinga, H.K. Gilissen, S. Groenewolt, P. Hessels, T. Smeenk, J. Swart, S. Werning, J. Vervoort. (2022). Gaming towards a sustainable future. EGU fall meeting, EGU22-11893.
  • Rebel, K.T., A., Mangnus, M. Bootsma, N. Keetels, L. vd Grint, J. Vervoort. Interdisciplinary participatory development of a sustainability game; by students -for students. EGU (april 8-12 2019),Talk.
  • Rebel, K.T., A. Mangnus, J. Vervoort, M. Bootsma, P. Hessels. Utrecht2040: a location-based ecogame. Utrecht. EcoPlaySymposium by the Utrecht Center for Game Research, October 2019,Talk.
  • Mangnus, A., J. Vervoort, M. Bootsma, K.T. Rebel. Gaming towards a sustainable future. January 22nd2019,NIE 2019,Talk.
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