Open Source GIS (Fall 19)
Learning can be Fun: How “Migrate” is helping to shift perceptions on the migrant crisis in Europe
It is no surprise that data science and the various academic fields which use it can have significant impacts on society as a whole: what we believe, how we think, the morals we assign to those thoughts, etc. This agenda of societal reshaping, rethinking, and redefining is clearly present in “Migrate”, an online trivia game meant to raise awareness around the migrant crisis in Europe. This project came out specifically as an educational tool, which hopes to end some of the stigma and perceptions around immigration and immigrants in Europe. “Migrate” achieves their ultimate goal of educating the public through “gamification”, or the use of game-design elements to create a fun, playful, and user-friendly software to encourage a higher level of user interaction.
While gamification is one reason that “Migrate” was well-received by the public, there is another factor which significantly increased the project’s success: the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Every program used to write, produce, publish, and distribute the project is available under free and public licenses. Not only does a FOSS-approach minimize the kind of exclusivity already prevalent in the academic world, but it allows for projects such as “Migrate” to be distributed, understood, and improved upon by the very people it is meant to serve. This creates a more equitable approach to learning and ultimately achieves better results; data collected from the project showed high levels of engagement as people played the trivia game multiple times, and participants demonstrated higher levels of awareness about migrant flows in Europe after playing. “Migrate” is an excellent example of how gamified, open source technology can easily and equitably encourage learning and facilitate social change among the public.
The original article can be found at: https://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XLII-4-W2/51/2017/isprs-archives-XLII-4-W2-51-2017.pdf