Green Gaming involves 2,500 participants from 7 countries (Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Sudan) in virtual trainings using a game-based approach to strengthen the green, digital and soft skills of students in ITC (Information, Technology & Communication) disciplines.
What’s the point of education through gamification? The literature amply demonstrates the efficiency of gamification dynamics integrated into mainstream education contexts to facilitate dialogue between people from different intercultural backgrounds. The use of gaming as a teaching methodology can also encourage behavioural change: through empathy and identification, game designers and gamers learn to act in real situations.
The activities
The Green Gaming project includes three types of training activities, each involving a gamification methodology:
- iOOCs (gamified interaction mechanisms embedded in videos)
- OFDs (facilitated debates using tools based on gaming)
- GAME JAM (in this innovative format, participants design a game that addresses the challenge of climate change)
Thanks to the diversity of the project partners (both non-governmental organisations and higher education institutions and universities), different intercultural groups (students of Computer Science, Technology and Communication, people from vulnerable and socially marginalised groups such as unemployed people, migrants and girls living in politically unstable areas) participate in the activities.
The training activities focus on climate change, game design, soft skills (communication, teamwork, problem solving, creativity, leadership), digital skills ( the ability to interact and cooperate in digital environments) and global skills (interest in the global impacts and solutions of climate change; improving feelings towards people with different ethnic backgrounds).
The methodology tested during virtual training will be formalised in a final handbook and disseminated to favour its replication, transferability and upscaling.
Credits
Green Gaming is a project coordinated by LULEA TEKNISKA UNIVERSITET SE, in partnership with SINEGLOSSA (Italy), ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY (Ethiopia), Sudan Technological University (Sudan), UNIVERSITY OF DODOMA (Tanzania), Centre for Multidisciplinary Research and Innovation (Nigeria), HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI (Turkey), RONESANS ENSTITUSU DERNEGI, in association with Young Innovators of Nigeria Social Organisation (YIN, Nigeria), Polo9 Società Cooperativa Sociale – Impresa Sociale (Italy), Tanzania Community Networks Alliance (tzCNA) (Tanzania), funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange programme.
