Next Generation Learning & Skills category
Flinders University’s ‘Gamified Sustainability Learning Lab’ is a digital learning initiative designed to embed sustainability principles and practices across disciplines, education levels and learning contexts. Developed through the University’s Embedding Sustainability in Teaching scheme, the project demonstrates how institutional strategy can move beyond policy by funding practical, scalable tools that support academics to integrate sustainability into everyday teaching.
The Learning Lab includes three connected layers: interactive microlearning content, a first-person sustainable city design game, and a multiplayer Sustainable Development Goals role-playing game. Together, these tools help students explore systems thinking, trade-offs, emissions, budgets, stakeholder priorities and collective action in an engaging and accessible format.
Since its development, the Learning Lab has engaged more than 1,000 learners across high school, undergraduate, postgraduate and professional contexts. It has been used across engineering, business, social sciences, outreach programs and international settings, demonstrating strong potential for broader adoption across disciplines, institutions and regions.
Impacts & Benefits
- Engaged more than 1,000 learners, including high school students, university students, postgraduate cohorts, teachers and professionals.
- Embedded sustainability across multiple disciplines, including engineering, business, social sciences, computer science and outreach programs.
- Built systems thinking and sustainability literacy, helping learners explore emissions, carbon accounting, financial trade-offs, SDGs and collective decision-making.
- Increased pro-environmental intention, with preliminary results showing stronger student intention to engage in sustainable behaviours after using the tools.
- Created a freely accessible teaching resource, reducing reliance on commercial learning tools and enabling wider use by educators and institutions.
Leadership & Engagement
- Operationalised Flinders University’s Sustainability Strategy, using targeted funding to enable practical sustainability curriculum change.
- Used co-design to shape the learning experience, involving students, academics, professional staff and industry representatives in development and testing.
- Brought together a multidisciplinary team, including expertise from environmental engineering, business, education, computer science and sustainability.
- Supported teaching staff with adaptable resources, making sustainability easier to embed in disciplines not traditionally associated with the topic.
- Demonstrated innovation in digital learning, using microlearning, gamification, serious games and role play to make complex sustainability concepts engaging and accessible.
Wider Societal Impact
- Made sustainability education more accessible, with open digital tools available to students, teachers, professionals and the broader public.
- Supported behaviour change beyond the classroom, helping learners connect sustainability decisions with individual, organisational, city-wide and global outcomes.
- Created a multiplier effect through educators, giving teachers practical tools to strengthen sustainability learning for younger students.
- Extended impact internationally, with use in New Zealand and across the Mekong region through the Australia-Mekong partnership program.
- Prepared graduates for sustainability challenges, developing critical thinking, collaboration, empathy, systems thinking and a shared language for sustainable action.
Top 3 learnings
Supported by
Category finalists
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills category
Flinders University’s ‘Gamified Sustainability Learning Lab’ is a digital learning initiative designed to embed sustainability principles and practices across disciplines, education levels and learning contexts. Developed through the University’s Embedding Sustainability in Teaching scheme, the project demonstrates how institutional strategy can move beyond policy by funding practical, scalable tools that support academics to integrate sustainability into everyday teaching.
The Learning Lab includes three connected layers: interactive microlearning content, a first-person sustainable city design game, and a multiplayer Sustainable Development Goals role-playing game. Together, these tools help students explore systems thinking, trade-offs, emissions, budgets, stakeholder priorities and collective action in an engaging and accessible format.
Since its development, the Learning Lab has engaged more than 1,000 learners across high school, undergraduate, postgraduate and professional contexts. It has been used across engineering, business, social sciences, outreach programs and international settings, demonstrating strong potential for broader adoption across disciplines, institutions and regions.
Top 3 learnings
Impacts & Benefits
- Engaged more than 1,000 learners, including high school students, university students, postgraduate cohorts, teachers and professionals.
- Embedded sustainability across multiple disciplines, including engineering, business, social sciences, computer science and outreach programs.
- Built systems thinking and sustainability literacy, helping learners explore emissions, carbon accounting, financial trade-offs, SDGs and collective decision-making.
- Increased pro-environmental intention, with preliminary results showing stronger student intention to engage in sustainable behaviours after using the tools.
- Created a freely accessible teaching resource, reducing reliance on commercial learning tools and enabling wider use by educators and institutions.
Leadership & Engagement
- Operationalised Flinders University’s Sustainability Strategy, using targeted funding to enable practical sustainability curriculum change.
- Used co-design to shape the learning experience, involving students, academics, professional staff and industry representatives in development and testing.
- Brought together a multidisciplinary team, including expertise from environmental engineering, business, education, computer science and sustainability.
- Supported teaching staff with adaptable resources, making sustainability easier to embed in disciplines not traditionally associated with the topic.
- Demonstrated innovation in digital learning, using microlearning, gamification, serious games and role play to make complex sustainability concepts engaging and accessible.
Wider Societal Impact
- Made sustainability education more accessible, with open digital tools available to students, teachers, professionals and the broader public.
- Supported behaviour change beyond the classroom, helping learners connect sustainability decisions with individual, organisational, city-wide and global outcomes.
- Created a multiplier effect through educators, giving teachers practical tools to strengthen sustainability learning for younger students.
- Extended impact internationally, with use in New Zealand and across the Mekong region through the Australia-Mekong partnership program.
- Prepared graduates for sustainability challenges, developing critical thinking, collaboration, empathy, systems thinking and a shared language for sustainable action.
Supported by
Category finalists
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
Next Generation Learning & Skills
