Deploying SDG Knowledge to Foster Young People’s Critical Values: A Study on Social Trends about SDGs in an Educational Online Activity

Abstract

Educational tasks for the development of competencies on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pose a challenge to educators due to the multidisciplinary and complex nature of these goals. It is necessary to develop innovative educational resources and tools that holistically account for this complexity and highlight the environmental and social components of these goals on an equal footing. A learning tool based on the serious games methodology, called BotBusters, is used to inoculate this type of knowledge and skills among young Europeans through a specific news verification activity. This game has been designed to collect interaction data (logs) and thus perform an analysis of players’ behavior, which allows us to understand their preferences and knowledge of the SDGs (specifically 3, 12, 13 and 15). The data collected yield interesting conclusions about the educational needs of young people in this field, showing their preferences for topics related to the environmental SDGs. This indicates that there is a need to promote awareness of the SDGs on social issues, especially those that require a more collective type of agreement and intervention.