Green Gaming - developing soft and digital skills through game-based approach to address 21st century challenges

ongoing

Green Gaming aims to develop a methodology that uses a game-based approach to achieve the objectives of equipping ICT students and vulnerable young people with soft, digital, and global skills. Literature provides evidence on the appropriateness of game-based approaches for enhancing those skills. Gaming is also appropriate to attract young people - also those not included in traditional education - and engage them in intercultural settings on 21st challenges like climate change. It can also foster behavioral change: through empathy and identification, game designers and gamers learn how to act in real-life situations. This approach is implemented in all the activities of the project: iOOCs (gamified interaction mechanisms embedded in videos); OFDs (discussions facilitated using game-based tools); GAME JAM (in this innovative format, participants will design a game that addresses the challenge of climate change). The project involves over 2,500 participants from 7 countries: Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Sudan. The Consortium is composed of both higher education institutions and NGOs working with young people. This enables the creation of diverse intercultural groups involving ICT students and young people, notably vulnerable groups like the unemployed, migrants, and girls living in politically unstable regions. The activities are expected to provide participants with knowledge of climate change, and game design and enhance their soft skills (communication; teamwork; problem-solving; creativity; leadership), digital skills (capacity to interact and collaborate in digital settings), and global skills (interest in global impacts and solutions for climate change; improved feelings towards people with different ethnic background). The implementation of the virtual exchange is followed up by in-progress and final evaluation to improve the methodology and formalize it in a final handbook to foster its replication, transferability, and upscaling.