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Can serious games help to mitigate climate change? Exploring their influence on Spanish and American teenagers’ attitudes / ¿Pueden los serious games ayudar a mitigar el cambio climático? Una exploración de su influencia sobre las actitudes de los adolescentes españoles y estadounidenses

There is an urgent need to curb emissions and mitigate climate change, and this fight requires a change in teenagers’ attitudes. In search of new approaches targeting youth, online games are seen as a promising tool for communication and education. Using the serious game 2020 Energy as a case study, the main objective of this paper is to examine the influence of the game on Spanish and American teenagers’ attitudes (N = 108), employing a pretest-posttest design with an experimental condition (playing the game) and a control condition (not playing the game). Results show that there have not been statistically significant differences after playing the game, although when looking closer at each factor, some positive consequences can be found.

A framework for climate change engagement through video games

Video games have the potential to educate and engage people—especially young people—in climate change and energy issues by facilitating the development of helpful thoughts, feelings, and actions. The objective of the present article is to propose a set of game attributes that could maximise the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural engagement of players, and lay the foundations for future work. We have used semi-structured interviews with experts to identify a set of game attributes and a group discussion with teenagers to validate them. By applying grounded theory in our analysis of the experts’ responses, we have developed a framework for climate change engagement through serious games. It consists of 15 key attributes that we have classified in three dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Literature review drawn on sources in social psychology, communication and education has contributed to further explain and justify the inclusion of each of the attributes.

Outstanding videogames on water

Videogames have become educational, communicative and social tools among the young, favouring the acquisition of skills, abilities and values, encompassing an endless number of themes, and helping them to experience and to face, in the first person, a great diversity of environmental situations and ecology problems. Thus, the present article aims: (a) to evaluate a sample of 20 educational videogames about water, making use of some empirical criteria of quality; and (b) to design, validate and apply an integrated quality indicator of educational videogames on water, based on the aspects of narrative, gameplay and education, which allows us to obtain a ranking. The findings reflect a ranking of games allowing us to suggest that the nature of the game (simulation, adventures, platforms or questions) does not determine the quality of the game, although generally simulations and adventure games are placed in a range of medium- or high-quality, as well as those games that pursue objectives related to the design and management of a territory in a sustainable way. The paper provides teachers with quality criteria based on narrative and gameplay that complement and enrich the pedagogical dimension.

BAAT Co-Creatie-Activiteiten-KIT: (Digitaal) Bewegen op maat studie toolkit

(Digitaal) Bewegen op maat studie toolkitDe BAAT Co-Creatie-KIT is een toolkit voor behoefte-onderzoek naar (digitaal) bewegen op maat. Het bevat een fitness-band, een flyer met tips en tricks voor (digitaal) bewegen op maat en een speciaal ontworpen activiteiten dagboek 'One week in the life of'.Zie: http://www.digitallifecentre.nl/nieuws/out-now-studie-toolkit-voor-digitaal-bewegen-op-maat

Serious games and sustainability

Leuke tips & tricks voor (digitaal) bewegen

In dit boekje vindt u leuke tips, mogelijkheden en tricks om te bewegen. Er staan verschillende oefeningen en trainingen in. Ook vindt u hierin een instructie voor video-bellen om in contact te kunnen blijven met uw dierbaren.Dit boekje is ontwikkeld in samenwerking met studenten van de Minor Designing User Research in het kader van de studie en behoefte-onderzoek voor BAAT. Dit project is gesponsord vanuit Zaaigeld Urban Vitality (Hogeschool van Amsterdam)