Every day, more people are recognizing sustainability as an essential part of a thriving global future, looking to innovative solutions to meet the most pressing challenges of our time. As a Foundation Professor in the School of Sustainability and Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Stephanie Pfirman understands the power of engaging learning to inspire the positive actions and solutions of tomorrow. This has been the heart of Kahoot!’s collaboration with ASU, beginning in 2019. However, our work with Stephanie started even earlier, all the way on the other side of the United States.

“I was working with the Norwegian Consulate General in New York City on some public outreach programs related to the polar regions, and they told me about Kahoot!,” said Stephanie. “Together with the Kahoot! team, we decided to do a campaign focused on climate change sponsored by Columbia University and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Later, once I moved to Arizona State University, we did another campaign, focused on sustainability and global futures, this time working together with ASU students in a workshop class.”

One of Stephanie’s key areas of inquiry at ASU was sustainability literacy, wanting to look deeper into how much people know about sustainability, as well as her continued goal to inspire learners to expand their knowledge and help build a brighter, more equitable future. After the success of Stephanie’s first campaign with Kahoot!—now with 2.5 million non-unique participants—she decided to lead ASU in a new collaboration, and the results did not disappoint.

In April 2019, ASU launched its “Sustainable Futures” collection, a series of nine kahoots created by Stephanie’s students exploring topics from energy to green city design, food systems, water and more. The kahoots have since been hosted over 400,000 times, with more than 1 million participants (non-unique) from all over the world.

“The reach with Kahoot! is amazing. It is truly terrific to have this platform where we can reach millions, both within the U.S. as well as around the world,” said Stephanie. “I don’t think that many researchers – for example those funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States – realize the power of the platform to achieve broader impact, which is a requirement of all NSF grants as well as many other funders.”

However, not only did their content make learning about these important topics more engaging. Connecting with so many learners through Kahoot! also helped Stephanie and her team at ASU assess people’s understanding of key areas of sustainability—an essential first step to closing knowledge gaps and raising awareness.

“We gained many insights from participant responses about their sustainability and environmental literacy, particularly what students in the U.S. know about polar regions,” Stephanie said. “We also developed a clearer understanding of how to craft better questions to help assess literacy. After gathering this data, we developed a research article published in Journal of Geoscience Education, which was well received by the community, and we were asked to write a follow up article about it for the main community newsletter, Witness the Arctic from the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS). We are looking forward to working more with the data collected in the Sustainable Futures collection to understand other aspects of participant literacy.”

Inspire learners to become leaders with Kahoot!

“After you have developed a Kahoot! campaign yourself, consider working with students on future campaigns to have them construct the questions, gather images, etc.,” said Stephanie Pfirman. “It will be a fun as well as challenging learning experience for the students, and they love to see it when others play their quizzes.”