As part of the UAB-coordinated European HealthyMindEd project, dedicated to promoting mental health and well-being within the digital academic field, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has launched a strategic collaboration with the School of New Interactive Technologies of the University of Barcelona (ENTI-UB) to develop serious games, digital games designed with purposes beyond entertainment.
A serious game is an interactive video game or application specifically designed for training, educational, therapeutic or awareness-raising purposes, rather than seeking entertainment alone. It uses game mechanics to teach skills, simulate real situations, or improve learning. This initiative seeks to provide university students with gamified interactive tools that help them manage their digital well-being in an increasingly tech-savvy academic environment.
Within the framework of the HealthyMindEd project (KA220-HED), coordinated by Professor Anna Muro from the Department of Basic, Developmental and Educational Psychology at the UAB, a collaboration has been established with the School of New Interactive Technologies (ENTI-UB), affiliated with the UB, to develop serious games.
The project, funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ Cooperation in Higher Education programme, started in November 2024 and has brought together the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU; Germany), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the University of Warwick (United Kingdom), and the Media & Learning association (M&L, Belgium) to analyse and disseminate the impact of digitalisation on the mental and social health of the university academic community (faculty and students). It also aims to propose concrete solutions that will be included in a guide to good practices and policies for university digital well-being for European Union countries.
A cutting-edge academic collaboration
The collaboration between the UAB and the ENTI was made possible thanks to the digital illustration work carried out by Christian Martínez, professor at the ENTI, in the books of Fairy Ginesta, a psychopedagogical, emotional education and territorial cohesion project of Learning and Service linked to the UAB and promoted by Anna Muro herself.
Using a project-based learning methodology, some thirty students will participate in a gamified competition to create the best video game prototype focused on the scientific results of the HealthyMindEd project, with a planned completion date of 28 June. The main objective of the video game will be to help students "survive the digital challenges of higher education" while maintaining successful academic performance and positive mental and physical health.
This orientation stems from the data collected by the project, which indicates that many students suffer from significant levels of distress, loneliness and technostress due to the abusive and problematic use of screens and virtual and digital environments. The video game will be a key tool to educate about these risks in an attractive and effective way for young people.
Throughout the process, different members of the UAB's Expertise and Healthy and Sustainable Human Development Study Group (GEDHS) will supervise the development of the video game through biweekly tutorials to ensure that the content on behaviour and psychology is correctly integrated.
With this initiative, the UAB and the ENTI-UB reaffirm their commitment to educational innovation, the healthy integration of new technologies and virtual environments into academic development, and the care of the mental health of new generations of students and future professionals of the 21st century.
