Experiences from Using Gamification and IoT-Based Educational Tools in High Schools Towards Energy Savings

Abstract

Raising awareness among young people, and especially students, on the relevance of behavior change for achieving energy savings is increasingly being considered as a key enabler towards long-term and cost-effective energy efficiency policies. However, the way to successfully apply educational interventions focused on such targets inside schools is still an open question. In this paper, we present our approach for enabling IoT-based energy savings and sustainability awareness lectures and promoting data-driven energy-saving behaviors focused on a high school audience. We present our experiences toward the successful application of sets of educational tools and software over a real-world Internet of Things (IoT) deployment. We discuss the use of gamification and competition as a very effective end-user engagement mechanism for school audiences. We also present the design of an IoT-based hands-on lab activity, integrated within a high school computer science curricula utilizing IoT devices and data produced inside the school building, along with the Node-RED platform. We describe the tools used, the organization of the educational activities and related goals. We report on the experience carried out in both directions in a high school in Italy and conclude by discussing the results in terms of achieved energy savings within an observation period.

iSEA: IoT-based smartphone energy assistant for prompting energy-aware behaviors in commercial buildings

“…Later, they [55] developed an approach which utilizes the information provided by IoT devices to monitor individual occupants' energyuse behaviors in commercial buildings. Mylonas et al [56], Paganelli et al [57], and Tziortzioti et al [113] demonstrated how IoT along with gamification (i.e., interactive services, games, and web applications for occupants to increase their overall awareness) can be utilized to promote energyaware behaviors and getting occupants engaged into energy-efficient activities. In addition, research projects such as Green-Awareness-In-Action (gaia-project.eu), Personal-Energy- Motivated by this, we propose iSEA which is an IoT-based personalized feedback mechanism.…”

“…IoT benefits into occupancy detection and activity recognition [52][53][54] and has been used for monitoring energy usage of commercial building occupants [55] and increasing their energysaving awareness [56][57][58][59].…”

Gamification Based On Blockchain Technology To Enhance Student Centered Learning

“…The addition of features similar to this game has been known by many parties. It has applied to several applications, including enterprise information systems [16]- [18] , mobile and web applications [19], [20] and IoT applications [21]- [23] . The use of gamification has been widespread in various fields [13], [24] .…”

A Systematic Review of IoT Platforms in Educational Processes

“…Whereas teaching tools is when the IoT devices is developed or operated by the mentors or teachers. (Setiawan, 2020), (Verner et al, 2020), (He et al, 2017), (Jaklič, 2020), (Escobar et al, 2020), (Besari et al, 2017), (Zaharov et al, 2018), (Hauß et al, 2020) Non-Engineering (Paganelli et al, 2019), (Gunasekera et al, 2018a) There are seven IoT platforms are mentioned, Blynk, Node-Red IoT, FIWARE, SiteWhere, ThingsBoard, ThingSpeak, ThingsBoard. Based on the reviews, there are 2 types of how the researches use IoT platforms on their Strategy Authors Learning Media (Ga et al, 2021), (Asraf et al, 2018), (Paganelli et al, 2019), (Gunasekera et al, 2018a), (Mayer et al, 2020), (Guerrero-Osuna et al, 2021), (Setiawan, 2020), (Verner et al, 2020), (He et al, 2017), (Jaklič, 2020), (Besari et al, 2017), (Zaharov et al, 2018), (Hauß et al, 2020) Teaching Tool (Andrada Tivani et al, 2020), (Escobar et al, 2020) Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Istanbul, Turkey, March 7-10, 2022…”

“…IoT platform application made students had full interests in remote lab teaching processes (Asraf et al, 2018). Even IoT device using Node-Red platform was introduced as one of many ways to achieve energy savings and apparently made students interest in this new technology (Paganelli et al, 2019). ThingWorx helped the development of IoT based intelligent robotic device and increase students interest for this subject (Verner et al, 2020).…”