You have full access to this open access article. Environmental negotiations are complex, and conveying the interaction between science and policy in traditional teaching methods is challenging.
To address this issue, innovative educational approaches like serious gaming and role-playing games have emerged. These methods allow students to actively explore the roles of different stakeholders in environmental decision-making and weigh for instance between sometimes conflicting UN Sustainable Development Goals or other dilemmas. In this work the phosphorus negotiation game P-Game is for the first time introduced.
We present the initial quantitative and qualitative findings derived from engaging students at various academic levels Bachelor, Master, PhD, and Postdoc across three continents and spanning 22 different countries.
Qualitative findings reveal that the P-Game can be smoothly conducted with students from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, students highly value their participation in the P-Game, which can be completed in just 2—3 h. This game not only encourages active engagement among participants but also provides valuable insights into the complex environmental issues associated with global phosphorus production.
We strongly believe that the underlying methodology described here could also be used for other topics. In recent years, the integration of new teaching methods into traditional educational frameworks has introduced innovative and engaging approaches to learning across diverse disciplines. Among these approaches, serious games have gained prominence as effective tools for imparting complex concepts, fostering critical thinking, and enhancing decision-making skills [ 1 , 2 ].
