We promote education
for sustainable development
Our educational offerings are characterized by the selection of future-oriented contexts with a focus on sustainability, participatory learning through active involvement of learners, systemic thinking in the independent design of puzzle environments and the integrative integration of technical functional models and methods into the teaching of many subjects.
UNsolved – the UN puzzle cube
The model is a project that was initiated and implemented in cooperation with the German United Nations Society, the Mercator Foundation and Think-Square 2020. A brand was created under the project title „UNsolved“, under which various content and factual contexts linked to the United Nations are presented in a playful way using innovative puzzle formats. (see https://dgvn.de/ungeloest).
For example, groups of schoolchildren learn about the meaning and relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a playful and motivating way at the UNsolved puzzle stations. The first UN-specific puzzle room also celebrated its opening in Bochum in 2022 and has been available to school groups free of charge since then. The puzzle room for schoolchildren was developed in several workshops together with teenagers and young adults. In the creatively equipped puzzle environments, participants can deal with the origins, increasing relevance and current challenges of international climate protection. In cooperative puzzle tasks, they learn to work as a team and to make compromises.
In this sense, our scenarios for escape room developments basically correspond to the principles of education for sustainable development (ESD) and are also reflected in the various offers to sensitize students to sustainability.
Education for sustainable development
The following aspects of education for sustainable development are particularly represented:
Future viability, multidimensionality, multi-perspectivity and systemic thinking, dealing with conflicting goals and personal dilemmas, practicing independent and participatory learning processes
These characteristics of ESD learning processes are inherent in escape games when experiencing and especially when designing them (of course not always all of them):
Selection and processing of exemplary questions with regard to future relevance
Consideration of several dimensions
Multi-perspective consideration (technical approaches, different spaces, temporal perspectives, interests)
Promotion of systemic thinking and the networking of knowledge
Consideration of contradictions, imponderables, risks as well as conflicting goals and personal dilemmas
Independent and participatory learning processes
The objectives of ESD learning processes are also integrated into the methodology of the escape games depending on the topic, e.g.
Identification and analysis of challenges and opportunities in decision-making processes and in Reference to possible courses of action
Understanding and/or dealing with the limitations of knowledge and cognitive processes.