EduCITY, a Project for a Sustainable Smart Learning City Environment -- Preliminary Results

To drive effective change towards sustainable development, several courses of action have been devised, and education was pointed as a way to attain this goal. Recognizing the impact of learning in context, it is essential to develop innovative educational proposals that bring schools into other social contexts. This study aims to present, albeit preliminarily, the potential of the EduCITY smart learning city environment for Education for Sustainable Development. The research explores mixed methods to analyse students' perceptions of one component of the smart learning city environment, the EduCITY app, which supports mobile educational games, and its potential to promote learning about sustainable development. To this end, an analysis of data collected during five educational game activities supported by this app was conducted. Data was collected anonymously through a post-game questionnaire, and through automatic app logs of game performance. Participating students recognised the value of the EduCITY app in promoting education for sustainable development. There was also a positive trend in promoting learning about sustainability through the scores and number of correct and incorrect answers per game. This article presents indicators of the value of the EduCITY project in promoting sustainable smart learning city environments, specifically through the use of the EduCITYapp and its multimedia resources. Future work includes the co-creation of games with students, teachers and citizens towards education for sustainability to gather data to assess whether the EduCITY smart learning city environment can promote changes in citizens to empower them towards sustainable development. [For the full proceedings, see ED659933.]