Sustainable Development Game Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sustainable Development Game

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Environment and climate change; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GAME

NEED AND SOLUTION FOR THE NEED: Experienced in sustainability education and certification and somewhat frustrated by the levels of abstraction and bureacuracy involved, the participating schools have identified a need to rejuvenate schools’ interest in rich, meaningful and fun work with environmental, economic, cultural and social sustainability. In an era of accessible digital game design and great youth interested in gaming, we intend to develop a monopoly-like Sustainable Development Game (SD-game for short) where whole schools, groups of stakeholders within schools and individual classes can plan and record sustainability actions in their community.

OBJECTIVES: The project has the tangible goal of developing a prototype of a playable online SD-game that will take middle and high schools’ sustainability work to the next level. However, through engaging students in a technology-assisted, cooperative design project, the project also aims at developing the participating students’ broad-based competences (e.g. critical thinking, social skills, digital skills) required by today’s school curricula and working life. Participating teachers gain experience of guiding students through such skill development, which spills over to their other work and serves as an example of modern, curriculum-required pedagogy in the participating schools.

PARTICIPANTS: The project has three middle school partners: Sammonlahti school in Finland, Le collège Saint-Étienne in France and Kolding Realskole in Denmark. Work is planned such that there is a core team of teachers and students involved in various different roles throughout the project, but the project will touch all members of the participating schools. Four non-school actors in Finland are official project partners and bring different sustainability and digital expertise to the venture: Lappeenranta region environment office, Saimaa media center, Seepia Games game development company and Okka foundation offering sustainability certification to Finnish schools. Three universities with expertise in various academic aspects of sustainability function as advisory partners.

ACTIVITIES AND METHODOLOGY: The project will progress through three years of game development and consist of the following main stages: research, manuscript (= parameters of the game) and visualisation (Year 1), creating the game (Year 2), and prototype piloting and further development (Year 3). Design-Oriented Pedagogy and other methods of student-centered, skill-oriented learning will be employed in the course of the project. Work will progress through an initial Learning, Training and Teaching Activity, two annual Transnational Project Meetings and local work and digital cooperation in between.

IMPACT: At the end of the project, various dissemination activities will take place to spread information and experiences of the SD-game to interested municipal, regional, national and European actors advocating sustainability education. We expect many seconary schools to be interested taking the SD-game into play and in this way, the project will impact the sustainability attitudes and actions of thousands of youth in Finland, Denmark, France and most likely beyond. The project participants will gain an experience of a shared, significant and meaningful undertaking that will stay with them for life.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126800 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sammonlahden koulu & Country: FI

Project Partners

• OGEC Saint Etienne
• LAPPEENRANNAN KAUPUNKI
• Opetus-, kasvatus- ja koulutusalojen säätiö – OKKA-säätiö
• Kolding realskole