Designing a serious game as a tool for landscape and urban planning immersive learning

Abstract

Urban and landscape planning are critical to ensure there is a right balance between three crucial dimensions: human development, societal welfare, and nature protection and conservation. These instruments play an important role during the Environmental Sciences studies and, when facing them, it is crucial for students to learn the importance of compromising between the above mentioned three dimensions to guarantee general progress. This paper presents the design process of a serious game (a tabletop game) that should provide an immersive learning experience to Environmental Sciences students, and raise their awareness about the complexity of the topic and the need to balance between human development, societal welfare, and nature protection and conservation. We will introduce in detail the inception process, the identification of the learning objectives and how these have driven the design of the game. We also present the initial evaluation performed during a piloting phase. Finally, we will draw initial conclusions and define further lines of research.