Socio-ecological conflicts involving human beings, wildlife, livestock, and crops present significant challenges for communities and impact sustainable development efforts. This research explores the use of interactive simulation games that closely replicate and model real-world social-ecological systems and scenarios. These games are used to understand, learn and collect qualitative data about environmental lived experiences and player decision-making patterns. As part of this research, we developed EcoKnowGames Creator, a tool for integrating valid scientific models with video games. Focusing on Namibia as a scope country, we created a conflict game over lion conservation to engage participants in workshops, collect qualitative data on decision-making behaviours, investigate conflict mitigation strategies, and promote inclusive environmental conservation. This paper explains how the simulation game was used to explore decision-making patterns and trade-offs in a conservation conflict. It further addresses how games can facilitate dialogue and contribute evidence to inform research and support the uptake of inclusive sustainable conservation goals.

While there is a growing interest in exploring digital technologies to promote environmental awareness and stewardship, culturally grounded approaches, in which Indigenous knowledge systems shape Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, remain unexplored. This study aimed to develop a VR experience, which embeds ocean literacy in a cultural narrative of the Topnaar people. As Namibia's first documented inhabitants of the coast, they have developed a deeper connection with the ocean. The VR application, which has been co-created with members of the Topnaar community, allows for an embodied experience of collecting healing seaweed, while being accompanied by a Topnaar narrator in a visually appealing and realistic coast and underwater sea scene. Preliminary user evaluations confirm awe effects, as well as retention of the narrator statements. However further research is required to explore whether and how such VR experiences can promote ocean stewardship.

This study explored how culturally grounded colour representations could be implemented in Virtual Reality (VR) environments, considering that cultural experiences and environmental contexts influence how colours are perceived. We engaged representatives of the ovaHimba people in Namibia. We used an iterative design approach with community feedback and validation sessions to select culturally meaningful colours for VR cultural heritage presentations. Based on a related study, which determined digital colour codes with members of an ovaHimba community, a VR scenario was developed. Feedback was collected through in-VR and post-VR interviews, and a thematic analysis was conducted to identify recurring patterns across participants’ responses. The analysis revealed four major themes, namely colour representation, realism and authenticity, cultural significance, and overall user experience. The study concludes that iterative community engagement and validation are essential in achieving culturally agreeable colour representations and lighting calibrations in VR. Further research is needed to systematise indigenous community guided colour coding in VR.

This paper describes a participatory process involving a story team consisting of two community Elders, storyteller ≠ Oma /Kunta, traditional medicine man and educator !Amace N!aici, and translator Simon Kapembe from a San, Ju/’hoansi speaking community in North-Eastern Namibia, working together with researchers and Northern European students who prototyped a VR experience reflecting elements of the community’s intangible heritage of starlore and indigenous cosmology. Aiming to support the sharing and experiential understanding of starlore, this Work-in-Progress paper presents initial insights into the co-design process, outlines the development of the technical prototype, and shares the first findings and experiences from returning the VR prototype to the story team in the community.

Virtual reality (VR) applications hold great potential to create cultural experiences, yet they often focus on cultural heritage preservation incorporating entertainment rather than learning aspects.This study, embedded within a larger project of digitalising local traditional practices in VR, explored co-designing learning supports with primary school learners.Adopting a participatory design approach, learners participated in co-design sessions to create supports for a previously developed VR experience depicting a nomadic community's hunting process.Based on their designs, two prototypes were developed: a non-player character and a poster-board guide.Both were evaluated by the learners, and further design suggestions were gathered.The study offers insights into personalised learning experiences as envisioned by learners, highlighting the need for autonomy and agency, the dissonance between learners' preferences and authentic cultural knowledge transmission practices, as well as their reliance on familiar technological features.

Synchronous hybrid learning allows physically distributed students and teachers to participate simultaneously in learning activities. Despite the growing interest in synchronous hybrid learning, there remains a need for further investigation into effective pedagogical approaches and technological implementations that support teacher-student interactions at the school level. Addressing this, we present a prototype of an in-house holographic telepresence environment for synchronous hybrid learning, demonstrated through an exploratory study connecting students and teachers across two continents. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the six participating teachers to understand their experiences and perceptions related to the application of holographic telepresence for synchronous hybrid learning. Thematic analysis of the interview data highlights the pedagogical challenges that teachers faced, identifies technological environment design improvements, and outlines new opportunities for enhancing synchronous hybrid learning experiences. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on leveraging immersive technologies to enhance education in diverse and geographically separated settings.

Forming friendship with peers from diverse backgrounds is key to children’s social emotional development. In this study, we explored the use of social robot, Haru, as mediator for remote communication in children group, to support connection and friendship building. We invited children from different countries aged from 10 to 15 to participate in two interaction sessions with peers from other countries, after which we conducted interviews with children from three countries, focusing on their experiences, and perceptions of the robot’s roles in the process. The findings indicated that social robot Haru effectively served as an icebreaker and entertainer; However, improvements are needed in conversation flow, transitions between different roles, and supporting children’s autonomy in guiding the conversation and the depth of their communication.

Concerned with incorporating indigenous knowledge and the learning of traditional practices in formal education, we have created a Learn how to hunt like a San VR application in collaboration with primary school students in Namibia.The application is based on a previously developed and culturally validated VR hunting experience with a San partner community.We have extended the application with two features facilitating intentional learning, namely a poster board and a non-player character guiding players throughout the hunting experience.

As part of an attempt to co-create a comprehensive virtual environment in which one can explore and learn traditional practices of the OvaHimba people, we have co-designed and implemented a VR experience to construct a traditional food storage.In collaboration with the OvaHimba community residing in Otjisa, we have explored culturally valid representations of the process.We have further investigated different techniques such as photogrammetry, generative AI and manual methods to develop 3D models.Our findings highlight the importance of context, process, and community-defined relevance in co-design, the fluidity of cultural realities and virtual representations, as well as technical challenges.

In this paper we present the co-design and implementation of an extended reality escape room with 26 primary school students. The aim of our study was to explore the co-design process with students and to co-create a playable escape room, providing an asymmetric immersive experience in which players collaborate. We realised the complexity of designing such an escape room with primary students. We share our experiences and learnings in regard to required capacities and skills of co-designers, and adjustment of complexity and timing to players. We also maintain that the integration of extended reality technologies into escape rooms requires further research to realise asymmetric co-located collaboration.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a new technology that enhances the actual world by superimposing computer-generated or extracted real-world sensory data such as images or sound onto it. Incorporating Augmented Reality into Cultural Heritage has a slew of benefits. Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage is vital because it serves as a link between the past and the present. Museums do not engage their audiences, particularly primary school-aged children, and as a result, youngsters show little interest in their cultural history, and museums cannot compete with more technologically advanced and modern kinds of entertainment. The purpose of this study was to spark children’s interest in Cultural Heritage as they engage with it. Under the project, a Cultural Heritage game using eight Ovahimba items was developed and tested at a local primary school. Research-by-Design was the primary methodology of this research project.