Technology in Nature—mDGBL as a Successful Approach to Promote Complex Contents?

Abstract

The central challenges of our time mostly share a high level of complexity, which makes them unsolvable by single-perspective approaches. To offer adolescents the educational concepts that enable them to take various perspectives, comprehend, and finally deal constructively with these problems, innovative measures must be created. Additionally, the benefit of these measures must be shared equally by all learners, without being limited by their individual biographical or attitudinal characteristics. In this work, potential concepts were collected from geography education, technology education (TE), and education for sustainable development (ESD), and merged into a multi-perspective educational approach with mobile digital game-based learning (mDGBL) for the promotion of environmental and technology-related content. In the presented study, the accumulation of n = 94 Hessian students’ subject-specific knowledge (SSK) was evaluated in a comparative study with a control group, along with the potential influence of gender, age, and concept-related attitudes (CRA) in a longitudinal quantitative study. Firstly, in a study of this kind, in addition to the approach’s short-term success, the long-term effects on subject-specific knowledge were also tested. The results prove the full success of the innovative mDGBL intervention. There were strong immediate and long-lasting effects on participants’ SSK, measured right after and eight weeks after the intervention. It could be proven that, although there were partially significant gender differences in attitudes towards modern technologies, learning success was not influenced by gender, age, or any of the measured attitudinal dimensions.