Co-designing VR Game Content for Sustainability Education

In this paper, we introduce a study about primary school students who participate as co-designers in a design and development process of a Virtual Reality (VR) game about sustainability. Utilizing methods like workshops and focus group interviews, as part of a participatory approach, we seek to gain a unique insight into the students’ own perspectives and experiences with videogames and how the student actively could integrate their interest and knowledge in sustainability into the game design as co-designers. We initially conducted two semi-structured interviews with educators who are experienced in applying VR in their teaching. Following the interviews with the educators, we facilitated two workshops with six 7th grade students. The students play-tested our initial iteration of the VR-game and afterward helped co-design two new iterations. Having them influence the development of the VR-game, with the notion of “by students for students”, showed increased motivation towards developing the VR-game as co-designer. Categorizing, analyzing, and reviewing their spoken word in transcriptions, written, and drawn down ideas - resulted in several applicable ideas and materials for further development of the game. Our findings showed how the students expressed interest in contributing to the sustainability premise of the game. We realized how vast their knowledge was on the subject to begin with, which only led to more in-depth discussions on what contributes to the changing climate. We believe that, based on feedback and the theoretical framework, that the VR-game serves as an efficient educational tool, that can help facilitate conversations about sustainability.