Stop the mob! Pre-service teachers designing a serious game to challenge bullying

Abstract

Mobbing or bullying is a widely recognized problem in European schools, but it is most serious in Austria. We report on the game Stop The Mob!, which was designed during a teacher education course at the University of Vienna where students were required to play serious games to experience how deep learning occurs with the goal of designing a serious game for the course’s final assessment. The focus of this paper is twofold. First we describe the course ‘Digital games, simulation and virtual worlds for teaching and learning’. Then we evaluate the design of Stop the Mob! and illustrate how it provides viable possibilities to situate learning, minimize cognitive load, engage the learner constructively and facilitate the learning task of preventing bullying when pedagogically embedded into classroom practice. In conclusion, we argue that educators can integrate the game into their pedagogical practice to fully actualize its potential to prevent bullying.