Minecraft in Support of Teaching Sustainable Spatial Planning in

Secondary Education

Lessons Learned from the Marker Wadden-Project

M. Opmeer, E. Dias, B. de Vogel, L. Tangerman and H. J. Scholten

Spatial Information Laboratory (SPINlab), School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

Keywords: Digital Game-Based Learning, Sustainable Patial Planning, Minecraft, Expectations, Experiences.

Abstract: In this article, we have assessed the educational affordances of Minecraft to teach school children about

sustainable spatial planning. Specifically, we carefully examined the expectations and experiences of the

learners and the teachers of this digital game as an educational tool for spatial planning purposes. The

results of this explorative study confirm the educational potential of Minecraft. However, connection

problems and digital vandalism (‘griefing’) by other players may seriously hinder the learning process.

Moreover, it is advised to start with traditional design materials (e.g., paper and pencil) before working in

Minecraft, as learners may find it restricting to be able to build with rectangular blocks only.

1 INTRODUCTION

A lively debate exists on the affordances of digital

game-based learning for education. Since the

beginning of this century, a large body of research

has emerged on the positive and negative aspects

of using digital games for educational purposes

(All et al., 2016; Arnab and Clarke, 2017; Bouvier

et al., 2013; Boyle et al., 2016; Brom et al., 2016;

De Grove and Van Looy, 2011; Favier and van

der Schee, 2014). Although the employed

research strategies variate profoundly, there is

academic evidence that the employment of digital

games may result in higher learning outcomes

(Dankbaar and Saase, 2015; Girard et al., 2013).

However, a large set of factors influence the

effectiveness of these media during the whole

learning process. As such, these aspects have to

be taken into account carefully when using game

technology in an educational context (Hamari et

al., 2016; Perttula et al., 2017; Proulx et al.,

2017).

This paper focusses on the teachers' and

learners' attitudes towards Minecraft as an

educational tool for creating sustainable spatial

plans in secondary education. In 2015, the Spatial

Information Laboratory (SPINlab) of the Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam partnered with the Dutch

Road Authority (Rijkswaterstaat) to teach school

children about the complexity of designing

sustainable landscape plans. We aimed to assess

whether Minecraft was an appropriate digital

game to engage young learners with this topic in

an appealing and challenging way. Accordingly,

we aimed to answer the following research

question: Is Minecraft an appropriate tool for

teaching the fundamentals of sustainable spatial

planning in secondary education? We tried to

answer this question with the outcomes of a pre-

and postquestionnaire and by interviewing the

involved teachers.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Project Description

From 2015 onwards, SPINlab has investigated

how Minecraft can help to teach sustainable

spatial planning in high-school education. We

chose Minecraft because of its unique 3D

representation of the physical world, the

possibility to implement official spatial data of the

Kadaster (Dutch Ordnance Survey) to reconstruct

316

Opmeer, M., Dias, E., de Vogel, B., Tangerman, L. and Scholten, H.

Minecraft in Support of Teaching Sustainable Spatial Planning in Secondary Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0006764403160321

In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2018), pages 316-321

ISBN: 978-989-758-291-2

urban and rural environments from the physical

world, and the easy learning curve of this digital

game. The immense popularity of this game and

the ability to alter specific mechanisms through

‘mods’ and ‘plugins’ also contributed to our

decision.

In a project-based assignment, the children of

the Technasium in Lelystad (the Netherlands)

were challenged by Rijkswaterstaat to develop

sustainable spatial plans for the second phase of

the Marker Wadden (‘Marker islands’) in Lake

Markermeer. Together with the National Nature

Conservation Agency (Natuurmonumenten) and

the dredging company Boskalis N.V.,

Rijkswaterstaat aimed to improve the water

quality and biodiversity of the Markermeer-lake

by creating islands with silt from the bottom of

the lake. The construction of the Houtribdijk in

the 1950s from Enkhuizen to Lelystad had

blocked the flow of silt to open sea, and as such,

during the second half of the 20th century, the

vegetation of Lake Markermeer was covered by a

thick layer of mud. To restore the water quality

and biodiversity, islands were created with this

silt during phase one of the Marker Wadden-

project between 2013 and 2015.

School children were asked to investigate the

possibility to use the islands not only to enhance

the ecological quality of the area but also to

generate sustainable energy (e.g., solar, wind,

water power) and/or to create places where people

can recreate (e.g., a harbor and visitor center). For

this, we reconstructed in Minecraft the complete

Markermeer, the islands and the landscape objects

that lay around this lake. This virtual environment

functioned as the canvas that the school children

could use for their three-dimensional spatial

designs.

2.2 Minecraft

Minecraft is a so-called open world game,

released in 2011 by the Swedish company

Mojang. Two game modes are provided: survival

and creative. The survival mode allows the player

to roam in a borderless (open) world. The primary

goal is to survive in an environment full

of dangerous creatures by building a house and

producing food. In the creative mode, on the other

hand, players already have access to all

the materials and tools, which allows them to

build anything that they can imagine. This mode

proves to be an excellent starting point to engage

learners in sustainable spatial planning. Moreover,

the multiplayer option allows players to work

together on the assignment.

Location plays an important factor in

Minecraft. The open world consists of different

regions with their own (visual) characteristics,

place identity, and ecosystems. To navigate in this

virtual world, the player has to think in a three-

dimensional way as it is possible to move freely

in all kinds of directions. Reasoning about

distances, directions, and movement fosters the

spatial thinking process. The game stimulates

school children to use their mental rotation skills

to create, adjust, destroy and recreate entire

landscapes and objects. As such, various scholars

have argued that Minecraft can efficiently

contribute to the development of the learners'

geographical and spatial thinking capabilities

(Mørch and Thomassen, 2016; Nebel et al., 2016;

Nguyen and Rank, 2016; Scholten, 2017).

Four game characteristics of Minecraft prove

to be very interesting for educational purposes. In

the first place, the player can design entire

landscapes with its unique architecture, flora, and

fauna. Some players reconstruct existing places

and objects, such as the Eiffel tower or Dam

Square in Amsterdam; others create fantasy

worlds with castles, dungeons, and dragons. An

entire world can be created with the use of

rectangular blocks.

These Lego-like blocks have their own

characteristics and textures and represent the

building materials of the physical world. With

these blocks, players can, for example, transform

“silt-blocks” into grass or stone. Or they can

create buildings with various "wood- or stone-

blocks”. This high level of interactivity is a

second game mechanism, which makes Minecraft

attractive for educational purposes.

Thirdly, Minecraft stimulates players to work

together on a specific building project.

In particular, children find it very engaging to

"meet" in the virtual Minecraft world and to chat

about daily life, as well as to impress each other

with their building skills and creations. As such,

Minecraft is a safe environment, where young

people can escape from reality.

Fourth, the massive popularity of Minecraft

has resulted in the creation of numerous "mods"

and "plugins" to change the game mechanics and

appearance of the game in many ways. The large

Minecraft in Support of Teaching Sustainable Spatial Planning in Secondary Education

317

Minecraft community is one of the reasons why

this game, since its release in 2011, is still trendy

among children.

Lastly, another advantage of Minecraft is its

capability to load official GIS datasets into the

game environment. Together with the GEO-ICT

company, Geodan B.V. the SPINlab used a

Python computer script to implement these spatial

datasets into the game environment. Complete

areas can be integrally loaded in Minecraft

without the need to build everything manually. It

was, therefore, possible to integrate the whole

Netherlands in the Minecraft game environment.

Because of these characteristics, we posited

that Minecraft is a suitable digital game to employ

for an educational project on sustainable spatial

planning.

3 METHODS AND PROCEDURE

3.1 Project Design and Planning

To explore the educational affordances of

Minecraft, SPINlab, Rijkswaterstaat, and the

dedicated teachers have worked together on a

lesson plan and an instruction booklet. In July

2015, the case study and learning goals were

formulated, and a schedule was created to

highlight essential activities and (preliminary)

project deliverables. Subsequently, the teachers

worked on a more detailed lesson plan and hand-

out. At the end of August, all three partners

agreed on the final version of lesson plan and the

learners' instruction booklet.

The following lesson goals were formulated

for the Marker Wadden project:

The school children can:

1. explain in their own words which

spatial data can help them in creating

a sustainable spatial planning;

2. perform a multicriteria analysis to

decide how the implementation of the

functions energy or recreation can be

combined with the function nature in

the spatial design of the islands;

3. create a draft of their spatial plan on

scale on paper. They can motivate

their decisions and are capable of

receiving feedback from classmates

and domain experts from

Rijkswaterstaat;

4. implement the gathered feedback in a

new, three-dimensional version of the

spatial design in Minecraft;

5. can present their final versions of

their spatial designs in Minecraft.

The school children had to use spatial GIS data

that was provided by SPINlab to assess the

suitability of these islands for sustainable energy

or recreation purposes. Because the Marker

Wadden were initially created to enhance the

water quality and biodiversity of the Markermeer,

the energy or recreation plans may not interfere

with the ecological aims of the islands. As such,

before developing a detailed spatial plan, the

school children had to perform a multicriteria

analysis with the available spatial data first.

Subsequently, a two-dimensional draft version of

the spatial plan had to be created and presented.

Finally, the school children were asked to

implement the gathered feedback in a definite,

three-dimensional design in Minecraft and present

it to the domain experts of Rijkswaterstaat.

In September, at the beginning of the new

school year, school children in the eighth grade of

the pre-university education worked in groups of

three or four on this assignment until the final

presentation on 10 December 2015.

3.2 Research Design and Instruments

To successfully help the school children with a

virtual representation of Lake Markermeer and

phase one of the Marker Wadden in Minecraft,

three members of the SPINlab were responsible

for three different tasks: 1) project-management,

2) research and communication, 3) data and

technical infrastructure. A Ph.D. candidate was

responsible for the aims of the lesson plan,

research design, measurements, and

communication with the teachers. The project

manager was responsible for the budget and

communication with the software provider

(Teacher Gaming – MinecraftEdu, see description

in the following section). A data engineer was

responsible for the installation of the

MinecraftEdu client software on the school

computers, the preparation and configuration of

the Minecraft environment, and the

CSEDU 2018 - 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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communication with the ICT department of the

school (e.g. for configuring the firewall).

A quasi-experimental design was employed to

measure the school children's expectations of and

experience with Minecraft as a tool for sustainable

spatial planning. After the instruction, school

children were asked to answer two open questions

on paper:

1. What are the advantages of Minecraft

for creating a spatial plan for phase

two of the Marker Wadden? Please

explain your answer.

2. What are the disadvantages of

Minecraft for creating a spatial plan

for this project? Please explain your

answer.

The same questions were posed to the school

children at the end of the project.

Table 1: Quasi-experimental research design.

September December

Class Pre-

questionnaire

Pos

questionnaire

A3B

(12-15

ear)

Expectations

of Minecraft

(n=23)

Experiences

with Minecraft

(n=23)

3.3 Materials and equipment

A modified version of Minecraft was used for this

project: MinecraftEdu. MinecraftEdu has been

developed by the Finnish company Teacher

Gaming and is specially created for educational

purposes. It allows teachers to adjust the server

settings in an easy to use dashboard interface.

They can, for example, disable natural disasters

(lava) or the appearance of predators (wolves) to

create a digital environment that is solely suitable

for learning and spatial planning practices.

Moreover, the teachers can use the dashboard to

monitor the activities of their pupils and instruct

them with in-game messages.

Besides a client and server MinecraftEdu

license, Teacher Gaming also provided a service

for hosting the servers. We chose this option

for practical reasons.

The Markermeer in Minecraft was created

from the following GIS datasets: elevation data

(AHN2), land use data (TOP10NL), and building

footprints (BAG). All these datasets are open data

and cover the whole of the Netherlands.

Table 2: Total costs of the MinecraftEdu license and

hosting for this project.

Service Quantity Unit price

(in US dollars)

MinecraftEdu

User License

23 $ 14

MinecraftEdu

Server License

12 $ 41

MinecraftEdu

Hosting (per

month)

6 $ 30 x 4

months = $ 120

Total costs $ 175,00

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Results

As stated above, we asked the school children two

questions at the beginning of the project in

September and the same two questions after

presenting their final spatial plans for the Marker

Wadden to Rijkswaterstaat in December.

To question 1, about the expected advantages

of Minecraft for this project, the children

responded that the ability to assess the spatial plan

from different angles proved to be one of the key

strengths of this digital game for this assignment.

In the post-test questionnaire, the school children

still argued that the ability to get a good overview

of the design is one of the critical strengths of

Minecraft. They also responded that the ability to

work together on the project was one of the key

strengths of Minecraft for this learning task.

To question 2, about the disadvantages of

Minecraft, the school children responded in the

pretest that the unrealistic representation of

Minecraft of the physical environment might

make it difficult to create a realistic spatial design

wherein nature and energy or recreation is

implemented. Also, the lack of causality and the

simulation of natural effects is regarded as a

limitation of using Minecraft for this assignment.

After the project, the school children regarded the

lack of these functionalities still as a limitation of

Minecraft. However, more surprisingly, technical

issues such as server crashes and digital

vandalism by other players (‘griefing’) have been

reported as the most important negative aspect of

using Minecraft for educational purposes.

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319

Overall, the teachers were highly positive

about the options that Minecraft provided for

teaching school children about sustainable spatial

planning. The ability to walk and fly through a

digital reconstruction of the physical world and

the use of a 1-by-1 scale has been mentioned as

two significant advantages of Minecraft.

Moreover, the need to work together and to

explain each other's design choices has also been

regarded as a positive aspect of this digital game,

because it fosters the reflective engagement of the

learners. By explaining what one is doing and

why the school children looked more aware of

their choices and decision. The interactive, real-

time world of Minecraft stimulates school

children not only to build but also to communicate

about the spatial planning process.

The teachers did witness however that a large

group of school children relied heavily on their

two-dimensional paper blueprints during the

three-dimensional enhancement of their spatial

design in Minecraft. In specific circumstances, the

children preferred to draw lines on paper instead

to build with blocks in Minecraft. This suggests

that Minecraft should be used together with other

educational materials (e.g., paper and pencil) to

teach the principles of creating sustainable spatial

plans effectively.

4.2 Discussion

The results of this study confirm the affordances

of Minecraft for educational purposes. However,

we have learned that some factors have to be

taken into account to implement this digital game

in an educational context efficiently.

In the first place, it is highly advised to use a

reliable technical infrastructure. The connection

should be very stable, and the preliminary

Minecraft-designs have to be regularly back-

upped.

Secondly, access to the Minecraft-servers

should be restricted to individual school children

to prevent digital vandalism (‘griefing’) by

classmates. To our knowledge, Minecraft-servers

cannot be protected with a password. A so-called

white-list (a list with verified names) might be a

solution for this matter.

Thirdly, it is crucial to regard Minecraft as a

tool for spatial planning and not as a means to an

end. Other educational materials, such as the use

of paper and pencil are also beneficial for the

design and learning process. Accordingly, we

argue that Minecraft should be introduced when

the children already have received feedback on

the first version of their spatial plan. Minecraft

can be used as a spatial design tool for translating

this two-dimensional concept map into a three-

dimensional, digital spatial design. Since thinking

in a three-dimensional perspective can be

challenging, it is helpful if they already have a

(general) idea about the spatial plan they want to

create.

Future research of the SPINlab on Minecraft

will focus on the affective and cognitive impact of

this digital game in secondary education. In an

experimental research design, we will try to assess

to what extent Minecraft fosters the knowledge

acquisition of school children and how this game

enhances the learners' motivational and cognitive

engagement. Accordingly, we aim to contribute to

the scientific debate about the effectiveness of

digital games in general, and Minecraft in

particular, for teaching sustainable spatial

planning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the school

children and the teachers of the Technasium in

Lelystad for helping us conducting this research.

We furthermore thank the reviewers for their

constructive feedback for improvement.

FUNDING

This work was supported by Rijkswaterstaat

under grant number 31108874.

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APPENDIX

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 1 and 2: School children’s impression of

phase two of the Marker Wadden project: room for

nature and recreation. Figure 3: Working together on

the three dimensional spatial design in Minecraft.

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