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Comenius Teaching Fellowship; connecting bachelor's and master's level students in practical intercultural skills exercises

Recent studies shed an unfavourable light on existing tools that support at-distance learning in pre-university students. Concerns revolve around motivation, focus, engagement as well as long-term knowledge retention rates. Multiple attempts were made to connect digital games with education, designated by Game-Based Learning, although educational outcomes have been mixed. Possibly due to ad-hoc experimentation, the effects seem related to relationships between specific game mechanisms and structural design. This research project focused on potential effects of a digital 3D role-playing game in learning. A multidisciplinary team built a prototype, named Liber Domus, using game developing techniques and mechanisms that have never been used or explored in the area on this scale. Preliminary results show the game presents students with a more dynamic approach to learning inside the classroom, increasing motivation and fun levels and allowing for a less repetitive revision of subjects, and the flexibility of the tool for both classroom and at-home learning. Further development is ongoing.

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people's agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks. Why are we missing our environmental targets? A key reason might be our failure to recognize the agency of people. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are the product of the decisions that humans make. A better representation of agency in the mental models of decision makers can overcome this weakness. Making mental models explicit, changing vantage points, and refining strategies could achieve better results than trying to define common visions. Games can help in all of these tasks.

In this exploratory social network study, we examined how student relationships evolved during three month-long Reacting to the Past (RTTP) role-playing games in a lower division honors course at a large US public university. Our purpose was to explore how RTTP games—and collaborative learning approaches more generally—impact classroom community in college courses. We found that both acquaintance and friendship ties between students increased dramatically during the game, eliminating student isolation without tending to create new cliques. These added ties made acquaintance and friendship networks simultaneously denser and more inclusive than they were before the game. We conclude by advancing a hypothesis about the network effects of intensive peer interaction. Collaborative learning approaches like RTTP, we suggest, produce high-density networks with limited clustering because structured peer interactions cut across existing or naturally occurring clique boundaries.

The problems in today’s world are numerous, often global, and pose immense challenges to sustainable development. A recent, international response to encounter these problems was the elaboration of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, i.e. an agreement on 17 Sustainable Development Goals, signed by all members of the United Nations. One of the key enablers within Agenda 2030 is education with a focus on Education for Sustainable Development. At the same time, the Zürcher Lehrplan 21 aims at integrating Education for Sustainable Development as a relevant educational goal and developed competencies to be acquired for doing so, i.e. the future educational concept in Zurich, where the focus on this thesis is laid on. Accordingly, students should be empowered to reflect on their own actions and understand the connection of social, economic and environmental issues. These new competencies might also imply new ways of teaching. A promising method for the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development in class might be role- playing games, i.e. different forms of playing are used to simulate real systems and learn about them. Role-playing games should be motivating, and enable the students to learn through own experience – in accordance with Kolb’s experiential learning theory. This study explored the opportunity of role-playing games in a classroom setting with looking at the so-called CoPalCam game, i.e. a role-playing game modelling the supply chain of palm oil in Cameroon. It was developed within the scope of OPAL, a project aiming at shaping a path towards a more sustainable palm oil production. In order to test the feasibility of the CoPalCam game for secondary schools in Zurich, an adapted, German version was developed. The rules and structure of the game were adapted and written in German. In a second step the game materials were redesigned. Thirdly, the new game version was performed with five different secondary school classes in the area of Zurich with a total of 83 students. Finally, the game sessions were evaluated based on both short questionnaires, filled out by both students and teachers, and observations during the game sessions. The evaluation showed that the new game version is well suited for educational purpose on the secondary school levels in Zurich for students aged 12 to 15. All teachers were motivated to use the role-playing game again in class. The students enjoyed playing the game and were active during the actual gaming phase. The students’ engagement during the debriefing was rather low and needs to be improved. Learning advancement with respect to the omnipresence of palm oil in cosmetics, and the awareness of the link of deforestation, child labour and the palm oil production could be observed. It was not possible to conclude much about the networked thinking due to this game, as the main evaluation tool, the student questionnaire, proved to be only partially appropriate. However, due to exceedingly positive feedback, the adapted game will be further used within the scope of “Edible Research”, i.e. a project providing hands-on learning activities on food systems and agroecology for students aged 12 to 15 in schools of Zurich.

El presente trabajo estudia y analiza la producción editorial de libros de rol publicados en España entre 1972 y 2007 recogidos en la base de datos de la Agencia Española del ISBN. A esto hay que añadir la creación de diferentes perfiles relacionados con los juegos de rol, como son el perfil del lector, del autor, del traductor y del editor. Se ha intentado obtener el perfil del lector más ajustado posible. Para ello se ha recurrido a: el vaciado de la base de datos sobre los lectores del fondo de juegos de rol que posee la Biblioteca Pública de la Casa de las Conchas (Salamanca) y a la realización de un muestreo en diferentes lugares de España (Salamanca, Madrid y las CLN de Valladolid), así como a través de la red. Para los perfiles del autor, del traductor y del editor, siendo tan pequeñas las muestras, se ha optado por la recogida de datos a través de unas encuestas personalizadas a profesionales de dichos campos. También se expone en el presente trabajo una introducción a los juegos de rol que comprende: el contexto en el que se enmarcan, su origen, su historia, su llegada a España, las tipologías, características de las personas que practican esos juegos, ventajas y desventajas que origina su utilización y la valoración social de los juegos. Por último se analizan las principales particularidades editoriales que poseen dichos libros. Se estudiaron los registros pertinentes encontrados en la base de datos del ISBN que aportaron un total de 1170 títulos. Los campos de análisis que se consideraron fueron: editorial, juego al que pertenece, origen del juego, idioma original, precio de los libros y periodos de publicación., This work study and analyze the editorial production regarding role books published in Spain between 1972 and 2007. These books are included in the ISBN. We have also created new reader, author, translator, and editor s profile. We have tried to obtain the most accurate reader profile by analyzing the database stored in La Casa de las Conchas public library and by realizing a sample across Spain (Salamanca, Madrid and CNL of Valladolid). For the author, translator and editor profiles we have a small sample so we opted by personalized questionnaires send to the professionals in those fields. Also in this research we make an introduction to the role games: context, origin, history, arrival to Spain, types, characteristics of the players, advantages and disadvantages of theses games, social value of these games, particular editorial characteristics. Finally we analyzed the entries in the ISBN which gave us a total of 1170 titles. In this case we analyzed the editorial, game type, origin of the game, original language, price, and publication period.