Serious games as a catalyst for boundary crossing, collaboration and knowledge co-creation in a watershed governance context

Jean, Steven; Medema, Wietske; Adamowski, Jan; Chew, Chengzi; Delaney, Patrick; Wals, A.E.J.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.05.021

Cited by 65 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The focus of this study is on what Aubert et al [20] refer to as "hybrid games", which combine role playing games with computer simulations, and allow players to experience the impact of their decisions or actions over time, while developing an understanding of the complex interactions of social, environmental, and economic factors. These types of games enhance discussion and learning among players, thus enhancing social learning, and generally require a facilitator or game leader to introduce the game context and rules, encourage collaboration, and facilitate a debriefing phase [19,106].…”

Section: Recommendations For Sgs Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Socio-Psychological Perspectives on the Potential for Serious Games to Promote Transcendental Values in IWRM Decision-Making

Marini

Medema

Adamowski

et al. 2018

Water

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Modern day challenges of water resource management involve difficult decision-making in the face of increasing complexity and uncertainty. However, even if all decision-makers possessed perfect knowledge, water management decisions ultimately involve competing values, which will only get more prominent with increasing scarcity and competition over resources. Therefore, an important normative goal for water management is long-term cooperation between stakeholders. According to the principles of integrated water resource management (IWRM), this necessitates that managerial decisions support social equity and intergenerational equity (social equity that spans generations). The purpose of this discussion is to formulate preliminary recommendations for the design of serious games (SGs), a potential learning tool that may give rise to shared values and engage stakeholders with conflicting interests to cooperate towards a common goal. Specifically, this discussion explores whether SGs could promote values that transcend self-interest (transcendental values), based on the contributions of social psychology. The discussion is organized in the following way. First, an introduction is provided as to why understanding values from psychological perspectives is both important for water management and a potential avenue for learning in SGs. Second, a review of the description of values and mechanisms of value change from the field of social psychology is presented. This review highlights key psychological constraints to learning or applying values. Based on this review, recommendations are made for SGs designers to consider when developing games for water management, in order to promote transcendental values. Overall, the main conclusions from exploring the potential of value change for IWRM through SGs design are as follows: 1-SGs design needs to consider how all values change systematically; 2-SGs design should incorporate the many value conflicts that are faced in real life water management, 3-SGs could potentially promote learning by having players reflect on the reasoning behind value priorities across water management situations, and 4-value change ought to be tested in an iterative SGs design process using the Schwartz's Value Survey (SVS) (or something akin to it).

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Section: Recommendations For Sgs Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The list of research publications where SGs have been used and reviewed for IWRM is considerable and fast growing (e.g., [15,20,21,23,25,106]). A few studies stand out as providing experimental evidence of the ability and means through which SGs may facilitate behavioral changes.…”

Section: Values Can Be Learned Through Cognitive Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-Psychological Perspectives on the Potential for Serious Games to Promote Transcendental Values in IWRM Decision-Making

Marini

Medema

Adamowski

et al. 2018

Water

Self Cite

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“…Preliminary research [36] involving the SG AquaRepublica has shown that SG have the potential to stimulate the four stages of the knowledge co-creation process, and Barreteau, Le Page, and Perez [23] add that SG and gaming simulations offer a unique opportunity to facilitate decision-making processes. One type of SG used in environmental management combines computer simulations powered by environmental models with role-play as a method to address the complexity inherent to environmental problems, while promoting collaboration and learning among stakeholders [37][38][39].…”

Section: Knowledge Co-creation and Stakeholder Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many different types of boundaries can exist between stakeholder groups, for example, these boundaries can be administrative, jurisdictional, socio-cultural, and cognitive. Boundaries often carry a negative connotation denoting a divide or a separation that can lead to discontinuity or inaction [36,37,40]. However, the discontinuities created by boundaries can trigger learning by a process of collaborative reframing between stakeholders, resulting in the creation of new and different types of knowledge [16,22].…”

Section: Knowledge Co-creation and Stakeholder Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To ensure that participants understand how they can use what they have learned during gameplay in a real-world setting, a debriefing session following a game event is particularly important [43,44]. The role of the facilitator during the debriefing allows for the combination of tacit and explicit knowledge through the communication of lessons learnt by certain players to the rest of the group [36,43].…”

Section: Knowledge Co-creation and Stakeholder Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Serious Games as Planning Support Systems: Learning from Playing Maritime Spatial Planning Challenge 2050

Jean

Gilbert

Medema

et al. 2018

Water

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The inherent complexity of planning at sea, called maritime spatial planning (MSP), requires a planning approach where science (data and evidence) and stakeholders (their engagement and involvement) are integrated throughout the planning process. An increasing number of innovative planning support systems (PSS) in terrestrial planning incorporate scientific models and data into multi-player digital game platforms with an element of role-play. However, maritime PSS are still early in their innovation curve, and the use and usefulness of existing tools still needs to be demonstrated. Therefore, the authors investigate the serious game, MSP Challenge 2050, for its potential use as an innovative maritime PSS and present the results of three case studies on participant learning in sessions of game events held in Newfoundland, Venice, and Copenhagen. This paper focusses on the added values of MSP Challenge 2050, specifically at the individual, group, and outcome levels, through the promotion of the knowledge co-creation cycle. During the three game events, data was collected through participant surveys. Additionally, participants of the Newfoundland event were audiovisually recorded to perform an interaction analysis. Results from survey answers and the interaction analysis provide evidence that MSP Challenge 2050 succeeds at the promotion of group and individual learning by translating complex information to players and creating a forum wherein participants can share their thoughts and perspectives all the while (co-) creating new types of knowledge. Overall, MSP Challenge and serious games in general represent promising tools that can be used to facilitate the MSP process.

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Flipping Lakes: Explaining concepts of catchment‐scale water management through a serious game

Armstrong

Kramer

Domis

et al. 2021

Limnology & Ocean Methods

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Ongoing anthropogenic and climatic pressures on inland waters have made water quality management a challenge of the 21st century. A holistic catchment-scale approach to water management which includes stakeholder participation will be a key in maintaining lake health. A first step toward community engagement is to bolster environmental literacy on lake management, ecology, and eutrophication concepts of stakeholders now and in future generations. However, communicating with nonwater professionals about effects of pollution on water quality and catchment-scale interactions across space and time can be difficult. Here, we present "Flipping Lakes," a games-based method for lake professionals to communicate and educate about catchment-level water quality management to diverse audiences. In Flipping Lakes, the players take on the role of water managers in a catchment and are tasked to prevent a lake from "flipping" from a clear to a turbid state. During the game, the catchment slowly becomes polluted by a range of sources of which the effects are exacerbated by societal or climatic scenarios. Players need to implement measures while taking into consideration the intrinsic properties of the catchment in order to keep lakes clean. The game was tested with a diverse range of user groups and was well-received. With its entertaining and accessible content, Flipping Lakes can lower communication barriers and increase understanding of difficult water quality concepts. The game is highly customizable, making it applicable to a variety of settings to support education and engagement of stakeholders and the broader community in order to address local water challenges around the globe.

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Serious games as a catalyst for boundary crossing, collaboration and knowledge co-creation in a watershed governance context

Cited by 65 publications

References 39 publications

Socio-Psychological Perspectives on the Potential for Serious Games to Promote Transcendental Values in IWRM Decision-Making

Socio-Psychological Perspectives on the Potential for Serious Games to Promote Transcendental Values in IWRM Decision-Making

Serious Games as Planning Support Systems: Learning from Playing Maritime Spatial Planning Challenge 2050

Flipping Lakes: Explaining concepts of catchment‐scale water management through a serious game

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