A DUOLINGO for sustainability education?
It’s hard to overlook DuoLingo when it comes to new educational solutions. They managed to lower the barrier of language learning, break-down the experience into smaller digestible pieces and bring language education to every corner of the world. One good example is Junyi’s father. He lives in China and speaks no other language than Mandarin. He has spent around 150 hours learning English by himself and can now engage in simple conversation in English.
Shall we design a Duolingo for sustainability education?
The initial idea for Cuiz is very much inspired by the Duolingo Model. You can learn the basic knowledge and concept, then level up into a specific industry or field ( e.g. fashion, material, building, food etc. ) and eventually achieve a certification as a sustainability expert in the field of your choice.
*early mockup for the duolingo for sustainability idea
However, we also realize that learning about sustainability and climate change education is not the same as learning a new language. Language learning, it's about repetition, memorizing and practicing in different scenarios. On the other hand, when it comes to increasing climate literacy, other factors like shifting attitudes, simulating systematic thinking or gaining social support are also key to the learning process.
Increase Literacy
Most of the current and upcoming workforce hasn’t benefited from education focussed on climate issues, circular economy & sustainable development. Formal education is still a privilege, therefore we need to identify & filter key learnings and translate them into everyday language to ensure no-one is left behind in this economic shift.
Simulate Systematic Thinking
The future of economy and society requires people shifting from a linear way of thinking towards a systematic circular way of thinking. We believe this core shift is the key to change our consumption behaviors, production methods and how we view the world. By playing in a curated game situation, we can enable players to train their systematic thinking.
Shift Attitude
Climate change is as big of a social challenge as a scientific one. The current climate communication ‘one size fits all’ strategy failed to engage with the public. We curate social experiences to start the conversation and normalize climate actions, caring about the planet should not be only a hippie thing.
Inspire action
We believe in the power of storytelling, each game we design is a collection of emotions, knowledge and best practices. With the help from our social approach, we hope each game session can be an opportunity to spark a new action.
We like to play, and fall in love with the idea that playing games is an experience across the world of reality, world of knowledge and world of imagination. More importantly, we secretly believe this is a solution to teach more people about sustainability. So before we build the “duolingo” of climate communication, we decided to start our very first game to normalize the conversation around this topic first.