For People and Planet: A Pilot Study of an Educational Mobile Game on the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

For People and Planet: An SDG Adventure refers to a freely available Android-based narrative adventure game and teacher resource pack that helps learners see the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their day-to-day lives. In this paper, we describe the results of a pilot study of the game with 29 middle school Science students from the Philippines. The purpose of the study was to determine whether the students gained new knowledge from the game and how they characterized the game experience. The study found that learning was uneven with most students achieving quiz scores of 65% or higher but with one cohort averaging only 40%. Despite the unevenness of the knowledge assessment, students agreed that the game made them feel competent, gave them a sense of flow, and was immersive, albeit not very challenging. Opportunities for improvement include the creation of versions of the game for other platforms, deployment of the game in other subject areas, and further editing of the teacher resource pack.