Use of game-based learning to enhance curiosity for statistics education through United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The statistics presented in news such as unemployment rate, climate change, interest rates and recently COVID-19 infection, or vaccination rates is of interest to most people. Logically, we expect more students wanting to study statistics but unfortunately, many students find statistics “boring” or irrelevant to their lives and studies. Enhancing curiosity through relevance and meaningful feedback (Wang, 2019) can address the issues related to Statistics education. A game designed to educate students in statistics education based on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) (Sustainable Development Goals, 2021) could be a solution to examine the effect of feedback, and relevance on enhancing curiosity from a psychological perspective. The Statistical game in this context consists of four levels including questions developed using Bloom’s taxonomy. The game outlines a story around UNSDG datasets related to poverty, education, and health, where feedback is supplied to learners via various characters. This presentation will report on the design of the game and the feedback strategies to enhance learners’ curiosity. Participants’ data will be collected through system interaction, and self-reporting using validated instruments. This study presents a promising approach for educators in refocusing their efforts to improve Statistics education by fostering a level of curiosity through relevance and meaningful feedback on a digital platform.