The Learning Challenge is a fascinating synergy between technology, outdoor activities, and community engagement, designed to catalyze tangible impact.
How can nature and gamification work together effectively?
Let’s find out together!
Table of contents
What is a Learning Challenge?
The Learning Challenge is the perfect mix of technology, outdoor experiences, and community engagement, making it possible to involve large numbers of people in creating concrete impact.
The challenge always sets a goal linked to monitoring and collecting data in nature through the use of the iNaturalist app. Once the goal has been defined, the challenge is divided into two phases:
- Learning: participants have access to multimedia and written content divided into sections, helping them become familiar with the challenge tool and learn more about terrestrial and marine ecosystems;
- Challenge: once the preparation content has been completed, the actual challenge begins. Participants collect as much data as possible through the iNaturalist app, with the goal of reaching the top of the leaderboard!
Nature and Gamification: a perfect match!
The Learning Challenge is the perfect combination of healthy competition through gamification and time spent in nature.
Thanks to gamification, which stimulates users’ active interest, the challenge encourages action that creates meaningful impact: spending time in nature while practicing citizen science.
Gamification combined with nature works because:
- It makes the experience more engaging: creating challenges in a natural space helps people feel more involved, because nature provides different stimuli for our mind and for the way we move;
- It promotes sustainable behaviors: during challenges in nature, people often become aware of the condition of the “playground” around them. As a result, participants feel more involved and adopt good conservation practices, such as collecting waste along the trail;
- It creates a sense of community and sharing: when we are in nature, we are more open to relationships with others, because it lowers stress levels and clears the mind. Challenges in nature encourage sharing and connection among participants.
The Learning Challenge is an excellent way to engage as many people as possible independently, while also embracing environmental sustainability as both a personal and corporate value.
This project is an excellent starting point for companies that want to embed sustainability into their core values, beginning with raising awareness among their people.
Learning Challenge with Sorgenia: discovering biodiversity
Sorgenia is a leading company in the electricity and natural gas sector.
Sustainability within the company is essential both internally and externally. In fact, the challenge was designed to engage the entire Greeners community: more than 300,000 of the company’s customers and employees, who promote and reward positive actions that help improve the planet.
The Sorgenia Citizen Science Challenge was launched in April 2023 and ended in September 2023. Its goal was to monitor as many marine and terrestrial species as possible using the iNaturalist app.
Discover more about the challenge created specifically for Sorgenia.