Learning about Sustainable Urban Living through Playing and Reconstructing a ‘Half-Baked’ Computer Game

Author(s):

Maria Daskolia(presenting / submitting)Nikoleta Yiannoutsou

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 13 B, ICT in University Teaching

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-16

10:30-12:00

Room:

JK 31/102,G, 29

Chair:

Anthony Coles

Contribution

Global as much as national trends in urbanisation are closely related to sustainability. Urban development in Europe and internationally has become an issue of growing concern because of its association with several environmental, economic and social problems (Cooper and Symes 2009). This is why urban living is placed at the centre of many current sustainability debates. However, what “living sustainably in a city” actually involves still eludes us, a fact which mainly stems from a lack of consensus on the very concept of sustainability (Dobson, 1998). Sustainability as a concept is by nature complex, context-specific and value-laden, and lends itself to many contested interpretations. But this is exactly where its pedagogical strength lies in: it calls learners to get engaged with exploring its inherent perspectives, it entails critical reflection on its structural value systems and emphasises the need to challenge established individual and social practices. Learning about and for sustainability is recognised as an essential strategy for achieving sustainable societies but also as a tool to enhance quality in educational practice (European Council 2010).

The focus of our research endeavour is to study an educational intervention addressing the concepts of “sustainability” and “sustainable urban living”, which is designed and implemented within a constructionist learning framework (learning through the construction of ‘microworlds’, i.e. computational environments pedagogically designed to evoke learners’ participation in collective exploration and meaning-making procedures, Papert 1980, Sarama and Clements 2002). We use the technological and pedagogical construct of ‘half-baked’ microworlds, that is, pieces of software the main characteristic of which is that they are “provocative” by design, in the sense that they call for changes, and they offer the respective functionalities for learners to change them (Kynigos 2007). Their learning value lies not in the process of simple interaction with them but in challenging and modifying them because “the assumptions” on which they are based contradict the learners’ conceptions of how things work.

In our study, participants collaboratively discuss, challenge and propose images of "sustainable urban living" while and through playing a computer game (PerfectVille), which was deliberately designed by the researchers to offer a fallible view of a “sustainable city”. Contrary to other games, which are criticised for assuming to be simulations of the “real world” (i.e. SimCity, SecondLife) (Gaber 2007, Thomas & Hollander 2010, Nilsson & Jakobsson 2010), PerfectVille is built on the principle of purposefully inciting users to question the model of life represented in the game. Participants are also invited to explore the concept of sustainability, to collectively derive their own criteria for living sustainably in their city, and to use the outcomes of their activities as a resource to re-design and change the game. Our main research question aims at investigating in what ways does playing with, challenging and negotiating changes to re-construct the PerfectVille game, can generate meaning-making processes over the issue of sustainable urban living.

The study is part of a 3-year EU-funded R&D project (“MetaFora: Learning to learn together”, EC/FP7, 257872).

Method

The study is based on the Design-Based Research method, a core characteristic of which is the reflective iterations along with the intervention in specific situations (The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). At this phase of the study we worked with eight post-graduate students in a Masters course in Environmental Education. Five of these students are also teachers in primary and secondary education. The rationale of participant selection has two dimensions. The first is to get feedback about the idea and the technology in order to make the necessary adjustments for classroom use. The second is to get the postgraduate students involved in the discussion and the development of the idea in order to be prepared to carry out the activity with their students during the second phase of the study. The study we report here took place within the context of the students’ Practicum in Teaching and Researching in EE. Four face-to-face meetings were coupled with asynchronous communication in the forum of the class. The data collected include: participants' self observation reports, researchers' observation reports, semi-structured interviews, a discussion-based interview of the whole group and messages exchanged in the classroom forum.

Expected Outcomes

The findings presented here are based on a) content analysis of asynchronous forum and face-to-face group discussions, and b) critical episodes recorded on the observation reports. Our findings indicate that playing with and discussing on the “PerfectVille” game led the participants to challenge the game assumptions and triggered reflection related to the criteria of sustainable urban living. In terms of game play, two strategies were observed. The first made use of a hypothetical scenario the idea of which guided selection of particular city-sites and activities. Yet this strategy led the group to fail the game due to its inherent non-sustainable logic. The other strategy focused on selecting sites (and activities) that raised their score on specific ‘resources’: money, energy, fun, etc. However, players commented this as an irrational and unsustainable route. All participants agreed that the assumptions upon which the game was built indicated the western, hectic and highly consumerist, way of life, which was questioned as incompatible with sustainability. Finally, while re-constructing the game they suggested specific structural changes in the game (in terms of transportation means, the activities hosted in various city-sites, time spent in each place, different uses of the city by different profiles of citizens, etc).

References

Cooper, I. & Symes, M. (eds) (2009). Sustainable urban development. Volume 4. Changing professional practice. New York: Routledge Dobson, A. (1998). Justice and the environment: Conceptions of environmental sustainability and theories of distributive justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press European Council (2010). Council conclusions on education for sustainable development, Brussels, 18-19/11/2010, http://consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/educ/117855.pdf Gaber, J. (2007). Simulating planning: SimCity as a pedagogical tool, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 27(2), 113–121 Kynigos, C. (2007). Half-Baked Logo Microworlds as Boundary Objects in Integrated Design, Informatics in Education, 6( 2), 1–24 Nilsson, E.M., Jakobsson, A. (2010). Simulated Sustainable Societies: Students’ Reflections on Creating Future Cities in Computer Games, Journal of Science Education and Technology, Online First 14 June 2010, DOI 10.1007/s10956-010-9232-9 The Design-Based Research Collective, (2003) Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry, Educational Researcher, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 5–8 Thomas, D., Hollander, J.B. (2010) The city at play: Second Life and the virtual urban planning studio. Learning, Media and Technology 35, (2), 227-242 Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. NY: Basic Books Sarama, J., and Clements, D. (2002). Design of Microworlds in Mathematics and Science Education, Journal of Educational Computing Research. 27(1), 1-3

Author Information

Maria Daskolia (presenting / submitting)

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)

Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy, Psychology

Ilissia - Athens

Nikoleta Yiannoutsou

NKUA - ETL

Pedagogy

Athens

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