CRITICAL EVALUATION OF SIMULATIONS AND GAMES AS TOOLS FOR EXPANDING STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABILITY Jon-Erik Dahlin 1,3 , Richard Fenner 2 , Heather Cruickshank 2 1 Department of Energy Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 2 Centre for Sustainable Development, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK 3 jonerikd@kth.se Abstract: Games have been used at the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and the University of Cambridge (UK) to aid the teaching of sustainable development to diverse groups of engineering students. This paper explores how games have helped students at two institutions to reflect on issues from different perspectives. More specifically, the work addresses whether games helped to stimulate students’ learning of facts; student reflections; and student peer discussions. The games evaluated include: Building Futures; Democracy; Dilemma; Fishbanks; GaSuCo; Power Grid; and Puerto Mauricio. Methodologies used include: student surveys; deep interviews; group interviews; and essays, written assignments and tests. The main findings are that games contribute strongly to the learning of sustainability and improve critical reflection as well as facilitate interpersonal communication. . 1 INTRODUCTION Games are effective ways of learning about Sustainable Development issues, as “they simulate mutually accepted rules, roles, conditions and assumptions” (Dielman & Huisingh, 2006). Game-based learning with groups of engineering undergraduates has been used by Darling et al. (2008) and they found the approach was an excellent way of improving teaching efficiency and encouraging an element of competition in a non-threatening environment. They concluded that learning by doing in a game environment seemed to be a successful way of managing large group teaching, and was a good way, early in the academic year to break down barriers and improve staff/student relations. A key advantage of using games is that they allow the ability to introduce environments that would otherwise be too costly to experiment with, and provide a means of accommodating different learning styles such as verbal, visual, logical and aural (Morsi R & Jackson E, 2007). They can also enhance students’ information processing ability, enable quick decision making on what is necessary for solving the task and what is not, and enhance data organisation skills. In reflecting a range of dilemmas or messy problems that lie at the heart of many sustainable development problems, games encourage both critical thinking and problem solving skills to develop. Deshpande & Hunang (2011) present a detailed review of simulation games in engineering education including by Torres & Macedo (2000) and conclude that their use can provide a powerful tool to maximise the application of a student’s academic knowledge to real world problems and industrial settings. The use of board games to stimulate conversations around sustainability is described by Dahlin J-E et al. (2013) in which synergistic effects between large group lectures and board game play are described. Such an approach also has the benefit of facilitating contact between group individuals at the beginning of a programme or course. An important aspect to understanding the broader context in which engineering solutions must be delivered is to create an emotional attachment to the outcome of the decision (Fenner et al., 2014). Experiencing something of the (perhaps irrational) passion displayed when decision stakes are high over an issue relating to a large infrastructure project, for example, can enable students to have more empathy EESD’15 The 7 th International Conference on Engineering Education for Sustainable Development Vancouver, Canada, June 9 to 12, 2015 020-1