AquaGuardians: a tutorial-based education game for population engagement in water management.

Abstract

Water management has mainly been dealt with by research institutions and governments with little engagement from schools, teachers and the population at large. This paper describes AQUAGUARDIANS (AG), an alternate reality, serious game for tutored education. The game offers a cultural environment to engage communities and, hopefully, crowds in water management by means of multimedia reading and writing experiences in virtual-real world scenarios. AG combines: a) gamified entertainment experiences; b) artistic production ‘coopetitions’ of individual or collective cultural representations of water by multimedia communications; and, c) effective actions to save, preserve and monitor community water resources. Applications of AG in two cities suffering from severe water crises in Northeastern Brazil provide preliminary evidence the game improves (learning and water management) success indicators defined by schools and water management agencies.