Under Pressure : A 'serious game' to build resilience through interactive learning

This paper explores the significant role of serious games in the realm of risk and crisis management education for building resilient societies. Games as educational tools in higher education can be used to facilitate active and interactive learning activities, which have particularly strong potential for development of collaborative and functional knowledge among students, such as communication skills, resourcefulness, adaptability, and other action competences. The presented serious game, Under Pressure, is a board game designed to facilitate discussion and transformative learning on resilience among students studying risk and crisis management. The players navigate diverse roles within the broader societal context of the game, gaining insights into negotiation strategies and decision-making processes. The game's overarching goal is to present players with various scenarios, prompting them to gather information, negotiate measures, and coordinate tasks to enhance societal resilience. Under Pressure employs realistic scenarios, offering players a high degree of decision-making freedom within the game environment. Throughout the game, hazardous events strike the society at random, promoting the students to collaboratively seek to advance resilience to a broad range of possible scenarios. The findings suggest that the game effectively stimulates discussion on diverse perspectives regarding societal resilience, emphasizing the collaborative investment and decision-making necessary for synergistic benefits across the entire society.