In order to provide education for the Sustainable Development Goals not only for our campus community but also to the wider community, IMU Sustainability Office designed a game to teach the keywords that define the Sustainable Development Goals and the main topics related to these goals. The first workshop of the game called TabuSUS was held on Monday, December 18, 2023, within the scope of the “3rd Istanbul Medeniyet University Sustainability Week” events, at the IMU Ziraat Bank Library Foyer Area. The workshop was conducted by Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK, Res. Asst. Furkan ERUÇAR and Lecturer Zehra SAVAN from IMU Sustainability Office.
A total of 14 people, including 2 public participants, 2 staff and 10 students studying at different faculties, attended the workshop. During the game, participants were asked to describe the keywords on the cards containing sustainability-related concepts and then determine which Sustainable Development Goal this keyword was associated with. Thus, a brainstorm was held about concepts related to sustainability. At the end of the game, sustainable life gift packages were presented to the members of the winning team by the Sustainability Office.
TabuSUS was designed by IMU Sustainability Office research assistant Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK and developed together with the IMU Sustainability Office team, as a word game where participants learn and discuss, and also teach key concepts about sustainability while having fun. Pointing out that the design of the game goes beyond a word-telling game, ÇELİKBİLEK said that the game is also an environmental education: “The words presented as banned words on the game cards are actually the words we use to teach these concepts to the participants. For this reason, some cards actually contain words or statistical information that people may never use when describing the keyword. The purpose of this setup of the game is that we want to convey some information to people about those goals within the game. We aimed to convey information through gamification by reflecting the issues thatare important on the cards in this way” she said.
The IMU Sustainability Office team stated that while the game basically focuses on the issues that need to be addressed to achieve sustainable development goals, it goes much further and allows a better understanding of the relationships between goals and sub-goals. It was stated that during the game, participants were helped to discover that some sub-goals contributed to more than one goal.
Stating that they received positive feedback from the participants after the game, the Sustainability Office team explained that their next goal is to provide education opportunities to a wider community regarding the Sustainable Development Goals by organizing workshops for the game both within our University and in different institutions and events.
NOTE: To request to organize the workshop at your institution, you can contact ayca.celikbilek@medeniyet.edu.tr and surdurulebilirlik@medeniyet.edu.tr.
