THE BIG GAME: Immersive and Multidisciplinary STEM Learning through A Cooperative Story-Driven Digital Game

The BIG GAME project addressed three critical European needs: promoting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, supporting digital transformation, and combating climate change. It built upon prior STEM efforts, identified weaknesses and implemented a new pedagogical approach with a stronger partner team. Across Europe, waning interest in science education underscored the urgency of enhancing STEM teaching to foster multidisciplinary learning. Digital skills were deemed essential for citizens, yet gaps persisted among European teachers and students, necessitating comprehensive ICT education. Climate change concerns are widely shared among Europeans, especially youth, aligning with EU priorities like the European Green Deal, which emphasised cooperation and action on climate change at an international level.

The BIG GAME project addressed three critical European needs: promoting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, supporting digital transformation, and combating climate change. It built upon prior STEM efforts, identified weaknesses and implemented a new pedagogical approach with a stronger partner team. Across Europe, waning interest in science education underscored the urgency of enhancing STEM teaching to foster multidisciplinary learning. Digital skills were deemed essential for citizens, yet gaps persisted among European teachers and students, necessitating comprehensive ICT education. Climate change concerns are widely shared among Europeans, especially youth, aligning with EU priorities like the European Green Deal, which emphasised cooperation and action on climate change at an international level.

The first objective was to define the concept of the BIG GAME and its virtual world. This required an in-depth analysis of the environmental issues to be addressed within the game framework. Developing a tailored game world involved creating a STEM learning model etc. Pilot testing was crucial to refine gameplay within the digital environment. The second objective delved into digital storytelling in STEM education. This included defining a digital storytelling approach specific to the project and analysis of experiences and best practices in constructing and assessing digital storytelling scenarios in STEM education. A series of story-driven STEM learning scenarios focusing on environmental issues was developed. An extensive handbook and toolkit detailing the Digital Storytelling Approach in STEM education was produced. The third objective was centred on organisation and dissemination including establishing a Digital Bank to store the developed environmental STEM learning objects. Planning, piloting, and assessment criteria were defined for the BIG GAME competition, with training campaigns and events organised to support participating teachers. Updates and expansions of story-driven learning materials ensured ongoing relevance.

The BIG GAME Learning Concept and Model. This outcome presents a digital game-based learning environment. It is an imaginary game world and a STEM-learning model based on it. It intended to create a constructed experience that is the same for all participants, based on a game world on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. It was structured as a series of game missions in the form of environmental problems arising in the game's fictional world that should be solved. Handbook and Toolkit on Digital Storytelling Approach in STEM. This outcome supported the target groups (teachers and students) in constructing story driven learning scenarios to present possible solutions for the environmental problems arising in different missions to be dealt with in the digital game-based learning environment. It is constituted of a handbook on how to use the digital storytelling approach in STEM education focused on the multidisciplinarity of the subjects included, how to describe and design a set of scenarios that could also be used for in-class role playing sessions or as paper-based assignments, independently of the digital game-based learning environment. Digital Bank of Environmental STEM learning objects. This outcome is a platform in which the open resources created by the students are collected. These story-driven scenarios represent the solutions to the environmental problems arising in the game's fictional world. The participants worked in teams and submitted their scenarios to the project team. The best solutions proposed were integrated into the narrative in digital game-based environments and adjusted for the following students' assignments inside the BIG GAME and school competition. However, all the scenarios designed and developed by the students’ teams were uploaded into this “digital bank of open resources” to save all the works produced for reuse, transferability and editing STEM learning objects focused on environmental issues.