Escaping from the mad botany professor using Virtual Field Guides and ArtsApp

photo: bioCEED/UNIS

UNIS is this year celebrating its 30-year anniversary of Arctic education and research with a series of autumn events for the whole community of Longyearbyen.

The previous week was designated as the jubilee week, which proved to be exceptionally busy due to three major events: a school visit, Researchers night as well as an open day for the entire town.  A total of 750-800 individuals visited UNIS during these three events, including Longyearbyen School with 250 children, young adults and teachers.

Since bioCEED’ s funding period is coming to an end we took the opportunity to showcase some of the educational tools developed through bioCEED. One of the teaching rooms was transformed into 8 miniature escape caves where families, group of friends and school kids were challenged with a set of tasks. Their goal was to assist our botany professor Simone Lang in critical field situations by using our excellent digital tools ArtsApp and the Virtual Field Guides.

photo: bioCEED/UNIS

Participants had to identify plants and explore field locations in terms of summer temperatures and the number of plants growing there. The exploration led to codes that could unlock the zarges boxes containing hidden treasures. A fun and playful day that gamified learning, wrapping our toolbox in a colorful setting and introducing the participants to our educational tools and important botanical concepts. Several teachers from the school as well as other visitors expressed their interests in these tools and hopefully this can advocate for their continuous use and relevance in the broader Longyearbyen community.

If you are curious about how to create educational escape boxes on your own? See our toolkit guide on gamification here.