The TOGETHER Project is One of the ENLIGHT 2025 Call Winners!

We are excited to announce that the TOGETHER Project, coordinated by a team at the UG, has been selected as one of the 2025 ENLIGHT Call winners! This project aims to embed local real-world scenarios into university teaching through serious gaming. Find out more about TOGETHER and the people behind it below!

What is the main goal of the project? Who are your collaborative partners?

Our ETN ENLIGHT project TOGETHER Goes Local: Local Adaptation and Stakeholder Engagement in Game-Based Sustainability Learning embeds local real-world scenarios into university teaching through serious gaming. Building on the TOGETHER serious game (an Erasmus+ project), our goal is to enhance, engage, and empower regional ecosystems by co-designing new game modules with local stakeholders, letting students tackle authentic sustainability challenges. The project fosters adoption through a network of educators, researchers, and partners, supporting peer exchange and professional development. Expected outputs include scalable and adaptable digital simulation game modules, assessment rubrics, and research on the impact of realistic regional scenarios.

What inspired this project idea?

Two interlinked challenges motivated our project: growing demand for competency-based education in higher education and budget constraints that limit universities’ ability to deliver innovative, high-quality training. Individually, we have successfully used serious games to develop competencies, but the wickedness of sustainability issues requires a currently non-existent interdisciplinary approach. Recognizing this, we saw an opportunity to combine our expertise in digital simulation games, leveraging our diverse academic backgrounds, and the ENLIGHT network’s cross-disciplinary cooperation to develop a large-scale digital simulation game. The TOGETHER game is a scalable solution to train students in sustainability competencies and foster digital exchanges between universities.

Why is this international collaboration essential to your work?

Each partner brings distinct expertise to the table. Our team offers expertise in developing digital simulation games. We learn from other partners how to adapt it to train students in sustainability competencies and to improve and evaluate the resulting simulation game, focusing on sustainability competencies.

How did this collaboration come together?

The collaboration started shortly after an ENLIGHT matchmaking event. The Groningen team started out with a dream on a cross-disciplinary digital simulation games to train students in sustainability competencies. Based on the pitch of this idea, colleagues from different ENLIGHT universities approached us to develop the idea further. The expertise of Gent in evaluating the effectiveness of serious games, Uppsala in game design, and Bern in sustainability sciences helped shape the rough idea into a project with a clear focus, theoretical foundation, and clear evaluation and dissemination strategy.

What impact do you expect this project will have for the University of Groningen and the ENLIGHT network?

5th generation universities require new, systemic approaches: by expanding the TOGETHER+ Erasmus game with modules on regional challenges, this project offers students not only an educational experience but real insight into local sustainability challenges in a broader international context. Being digital and scalable, our game also offers the ENLIGHT network the opportunity to have meaningful (virtual) exchanges with students from different partner universities cooperating in person and virtually to solve each other’s local sustainability challenges, ultimately fostering mutual understanding and larger European integration. These exchanges can be offered as winter/summer schools or as part of joint programs between ENLIGHT universities.

Does your project connect to other research, teaching or outreach activities you are involved in?

The project originated in the Community of Practice in Gamification at the University of Groningen and builds on existing projects of its members. The ENLIGHT project benefits from experience gained in these projects and new insights gained during the ENLIGHT project can be used to strengthen these projects in turn. We continue to develop, in parallel to the ENLIGHT project, our own projects and actively incorporate lessons learned. For example, the Economics and Business Economics (E&BE) game at the University of Groningen and Master in Sustainability transformations at the University of Bern apply similar competency frameworks to the TOGETHER game.

What's next?

The TOGETHER game is explicitly designed to be scalable and adaptable. As a result, all students in the ENLIGHT network, and beyond, can play the TOGETHER game at low-costs to them and their university. Furthermore, the game is adaptable to different local contexts and can be expanded with minor investments. We aim to implement the TOGETHER game in programs at all ENLIGHT universities and to expand to other universities in Europe, initially, and globally, and to keep expanding the game with additional sustainability challenges from the local contexts of where we implement the game.

The team at the UG:

• Dr. Daniël Vullings, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Economics and Business
• Dr. Michael Lerch, Tenure Track Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering
• Dr. Lorena Flórez Rojas, Assistant Professor in Technology Law (STeP), Faculty of Law
• Dr. Dina Maniar, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering
• Dr. Luana Silveri, Postdoctoral researcher - Centre for Learning and Teaching, Faculty of Science and Engineering

We are happy for the TOGETHER team and are excited for the outcomes of this project!