Salve a Cidade: Um jogo para disseminar os conhecimentos sobre questões ambientais no meio urbano

Abstract

Disseminating and increasing the students interest in environmental issues can be achieved through ludic activities, which are innovative and effective proven tools. For these reasons, this work aims to develop an environmental educational game, called Save the City, not only to motivate the taste for learning, but also to make students aware of the importance of the environment they live in. The game consists of a cooperative board game that uses the elements in a city as urban background. The city presents industries, a vehicle fleet, landfill, residential districts and many other mobile and stationary sources that will emit liquid, solid and gaseous pollutants to the environment. The players (students) will have to cooperate and take decisions strategically in order to improve the environmental quality. Although, the game was designed for high school students’ level, due to Pandemic, the game could only be tested among undergraduate students enrolled at the Environmental and Sanitary Engineering at the Federal University of Uberlandia. After the game play, the participants answered a questionnaire to evaluate the players perceptions and the game performance. The questionnaire responses suggest that the game most likely promotes environmental awareness, bringing new concepts related to urban pollution promoting the learning of environmental education within the classroom.