Towards a sustainable society through serious gaming Dr. Borzoo Pourabdollahian Politecnico di Milano Thursday, November 27, 12:00pm Room U6-­‐3143, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milano The main challenge for societies is to find mechanisms to arouse among their citizens better insights about the importance of sustainability, and, more importantly, to encourage people to change their habits and behaviours towards being “sustainable citizens”. Serious games simulate real environments. They can be used as pedagogical tools in creating sustainable societies: players become motivated to behave in a sustainable manner in order to achieve the ultimate goal of the game, which represents a prosperity phenomenon. The seminar will present the audience with a set of games specifically designed to increase the player’s awareness about those activities and practices which are necessary for every specific sector of a society (e.g. Health, Science, Manufacturing, Education, Business, etc.) to turn sustainable. In particular, we will discuss the mechanisms laid in the design and implementation of each game to get better understanding of the ways in which learning contents are transferred into players’ mind and behaviour, in a scale from abstract knowledge to behavioural changes. Borzoo Pourabdollahian obtained his PhD from Politecnico di Milano in 2014. His contribution is a guideline towards designing serious games in the areas related to manufacturing education. He has been involved in some projects funded by European Union under 7th framework program. Particularly, GaLA (Game and Learning Alliance) and TARGET (Transformative, Adaptive, Responsive and enGaging EnvironmenT). He has presented several papers in prominent conferences and is currently a reviewer of Journal of Transactions on Education.