Carbonopoly - back with a vengeance!

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Two and a half years ago I played a game called "Carbonopoly" and I also wrote a blog post about it at the time. That was it - until I read an article about Carbonopoly in the internal KTH newsletter Campi in November last year (article in Swedish). 

Tho years after I played it, the game had been redesigned (once more) but it had at this time also been used in the regular education (160 first-year students used it in the beginning of the autumn 2012). The game designer (Patrik) has at this point teamed up with a lecturer (Jon-Erik) and they had created a module with a lecture followed by a game session followed by a new lecture followed by a new game session and so on. All in all five lectures with four game sessions in-between (with the game sessions neatly tying back to the content of the lectures etc.). 

It sounded pretty great and I got in touch with Patrik and Jon-Erik. After "negotiations", we have now come to an agreement and my course on Sustainability and Media Technology (DM2573) will include a bunch of lectures and Carbonopoly game sessions next (academic) year!

There are some very important things that need to be done before that, during the spring. We primarily need to translate the whole game to English (my course has International students and is given in English). We also need to supplement the current cards/questions with questions that are more relevant to our course (i.e. more emphasis on IT and Media Technologies, not just sustainability, sustainable development, energy and so on). After that, we will print 20 copies of the game (good for up to 80 students) over the summer and use them when the autumn term starts.

The game has been quite heavily redesigned since I played it in 2010. I have a hard time remembering the details of the game I played back then, but I think the redesign is all for the better. I met up with Partik and Jon-Erik before Christmas and Patrik gave me a copy of the game which I play-tested a couple of times over Christmas. Also, our sustainability team play-tested the game in the beginning of this term and everybody loved it. I really look forward to using the game in our education and in my course! 

Also, when me and Elina met up with Patrik and Jon-Erik before Christmas, we suggested Patrik and Jon-Erik should submit a paper (abstract) to the Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) conference which will be held in the UK in September this year. I just found out they did that, and that their contribution has been accepted for presentation. This also happens to be true for both of the two submissions I'm involved in, and one of these papers is based on the course where we will use Carbonopoly. That will be fun!

I'm sure I will write more about Carbonopoly later. If not sooner then at least in the autumn, after we have used in our course!

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