Design and Evaluation of an Educational Board Game for Learning ESG Sustainability Challenges

Abstract

Towards the Paris Agreement underlines the need for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, it has become more and more important for companies to transform and create an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) sustainable development ecosystem. Moreover, there is a growing emphasis on educating and training employees in the concept of ESG. In addition to traditional lectures, game-based learning that encourages discussion and critical thinking is gaining traction. Through industry-academia collaboration with an international technology company in Taiwan, our research team designed an educational board game. The Learning goal is for learners to discuss and propose an action to solve the sustainability challenges for companies. Players can make final decisions through peer discussion which makes deeper understanding of ESG concepts and the ESG meanings of these companies’ projects. The preliminary study was conducted with 24 Taiwanese office workers aged 20+ to 50 years old. The results of this study showed that the participants had significant improvement in their understanding of ESG, and the mean scores of flow, game elements, and game feedback were all significantly higher than the median of the scale (i.e., 3), while the learners' activity anxiety was significantly lower than the median, which indicated that the learners had low levels of anxiety about learning. The preliminary findings show that the game mechanism designed in this study is easy to operate and may not make learners feel anxiety and increases the flow of the learners. Through the feedback from open-ended questions in this study, players who experience ESG challenges with different people found it interesting and had a better understanding of the ESG concepts and companies’ projects.

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Author Information
Pei-Chun Chung, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Chih-Chen Kuo, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Hau-An Yu, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Hung-Yu Chan, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Huei-Tse Hou, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

• Category: Education, Sustainability & Society: Social Justice, Development & Political Movements

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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