Air quality board game: elaboração e avaliação de estratégia pedagógica para ajudar na formação crítica e autônoma do engenheiro ambiental

Abstract

When information is widely available and often a reason for distraction, creativity is needed to keep students interested in the classroom. Playful learning offers an option in this direction, restoring students' motivation and attention. It is in this context that the Air Quality Board Game (AQBG) was created. The AQBG was adapted from Role-Playing Games (RPG) and consists of a cooperative board game, the students play as a team to achieve a goal. Usually in RPG, players play dice and let them decide on the success of performing a specific action, such as opening a door, buying an item, or attacking an opponent. In AQBG, players have to answer questions and solve problems related to the theme to succeed in such actions. The background scenery is a medium-sized city (500,000 inhabitants) suffering from degraded air quality and players are the last hope of this citizen! The game is played in rounds. Each round consists of five turns.The main goal is to save the city from the degradation of air quality before players die due to adverse health effects. With each round there are more pollutants emitted by specific polluted areas, players must decide how to act to mitigate air pollution.The AQBG was presented in the play class of the discipline GET048 - Air Pollution and Quality, of the Environmental Engineering course of the Federal University of Uberlândia and, after the application, the students answered a questionnaire through which it was concluded that the use of the game was useful for the learning of the discipline.