Using Games in Teaching Future Thinking

Nowadays it’s easy to find various scary visions regarding global future from the media news stream: there’s a lot of discussion about war, environmental crisis, economic collapses and countless other serious threats.

How could we put more effort to also highlighting all the opportunities and potential positive developments that are just as equally possible? The key to this is future thinking but what exactly do we mean by that? What kind of phenomena are affecting how our future will look like? How can you use games to discuss about different possible futures and strengthen future thinking?

All of these questions will be answered during this micro course. The basic idea is to provide you with practical, simple and fun tools for teaching future thinking to groups or individuals. The future thinking is basis for future career guidance and building necessary future work life skills such as resilience and critical thinking. The content of the course is designed to work internationally.

What you’ll learn?

• To understand the basic idea behind future thinking and concepts that are relevant to it.  
• To understand basic principles and purpose of future oriented guidance. 
• To understand the benefits of using games as a pedagogical tool. 
• To understand how to apply games as a pedagogical tool specifically in teaching future thinking. 
• Learn to create and reflect your own gamified activities.
• Improve capability to guide exercises and activities that improve future thinking.  

Who are your instructors?

Antti Rantaniva and Ville Eerikäinen from Juvenia Youth Research and Development Centre (South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Xamk) are developing future coaching targeted especially for young people. The aim of the coaching programme is to discuss about the future and different phenomena that are affecting our future and to consider what kind of future would be desirable and, on the other hand, undesirable. The key objective is to strengthen young people’s faith in the future as well as their agency and to enhance their abilities of futures thinking. We want to strengthen individual’s understanding of what would be a “good future” for them on a personal level and then encourage them to take initiative to strive for those goals.

How to pass?

To pass this course, you will need to complete all the course activities and get at least 75% of them correct. You will also need to give us some feedback at the end of the course. Once all those parts are completed and we have received your feedback, the certificate will be issued to you.

Any questions?

We hope that you enjoy the course! If you have any questions about the course material, please do not hesitate to contact us at Edufication@xamk.fi. We will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Don’t forget to answer the course feedback at the end of the course to receive a certificate!