Students as Game Creators. Easing the game construction process by using a toolkit to game design

Abstract

In recent years, serious games and gamification strategies have been used in the education field and seen as highly motivating for educating and motivating younger people. As regard to games, and in the field of environmental education, they emerge as an innovative approach to raise environmental awareness among youths, namely by challenging students to develop their own games for learning. When research also mentions obstacles in involving students to explore educational contents through game design, this paper presents the Gamers4Nature Toolkit, an artifact developed to support the creation of digital environmental-related games by younger students with no experience in game design. The toolkit was used by 53 upper-secondary and 114 undergraduate students along several game creation sessions, leading to the development of 66 digital games. Findings indicate that the Toolkit was considered an engaging approach to game creation, making it a valuable resource to support educators in game design activities.