Urb-En Pact - Appeal of energy awareness-raising actions through “Gaming”

Aiming to assess the interest of Alto Minho’s municipalities and schools in developing awareness-raising actions on Climate Action (mitigation/adaptation) - emphasis on Energy - and to determine the openness and effectiveness of using “Gaming” as an empowerment and awareness-raising tool, a joint reflection and a critical analysis were carried out based on AREA Alto Minho’s experience, before and after COVID-19 pandemic crisis, within the framework of the projects: “Alto Minho Energenius” – interactive puppet theatre play and energy quiz; “Alto Minho adaPT” – iBook joint exploration and strategic card game; “Kids4energy” – computer game on energy using Wii remotes as game controllers.

These actions targeted teachers and students from Alto Minho’s basic education schools and, despite being pilot actions, during the 2018-19 school year, 2,180 students and 123 teachers benefited from them.

In terms of results, all municipalities manifested interest in these actions (some even assigned staff to benefit from capacity building) and the overall feedback from participants was extremely positive.

As for the lessons learnt, the following should be highlighted: need to engage teachers from an early stage (planning phase, preferably); need to establish a strategy, define clear objectives, communicate effectively the methodology and the role which is to be played by each individual beforehand; ensure the teachers benefit from capacity building actions and gain knowledge; students, being social influencers, play a crucial role in disseminating messages within a community; need to keep tools updated and to ensure coherence between what’s taught in schools and the information which is provided during the awareness-raising actions; there is no “optimal approach”, the tools, the language and the depth need to be adjusted to the topic and to the target group.

The main conclusion was that students are more prone to an approach which uses entertainment as a means of learning as opposed to conventional learning methods.