Serious fun with computer games (original) (raw)
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“Stickier” learning through gameplay: An effective approach to climate change education
Journal of Geoscience Education, 2021
As the impacts of climate change grow, we need better ways to raise awareness and motivate action. Here we assess the effectiveness of an Arctic climate change card game in comparison with the more conventional approach of reading an illustrated article. In-person assessments with control/reading and treatment/game groups (N ¼ 41), were followed four weeks later with a survey. The game was found to be as effective as the article in teaching content of the impacts of climate change over the short term, and was more effective than the article in long-term retention of new information. Game players also had higher levels of engagement and perceptions that they knew ways to help protect Arctic ecosystems. They were also more likely to recommend the game to friends or family than those in the control group were likely to recommend the article to friends or family. As we consider ways to broaden engagement with climate change, we should include games in our portfolio of approaches.
Games for climate change; is it an excuse for children to play more video games
Do you think playing video games help children in understanding the scientific phenomenon of climate change? According to recent research activities, we do understand the fact that mediated communications have an increased role to play in creating awareness and addressing the global issue of climate change. Hence, there is a larger collaboration happening between scientists and game developers could mean the climate change educating games of the future, take realism to a whole new level dedicated for children. As children are the most vulnerable groups to video games, such gamifications will help to spread easily the climate sustainable behaviors among this targeted group. It is also evident that game developers, scientists, educators, and activists who believe that games are an underutilized resource in the fight against climate change. As adopted the systematic literature review methodology, this research paper has reviewed 10 studies pertaining to climate change video games from around seven different nations using systematic search on electronic databases. Electronic data bases were used to identify the literature relating to climate change video games. Relevant literature on the topic was obtained from e-journal repository of the CHMK library, University of Calicut. The studies were mainly retrieved from the Sage Journals and Taylor and Francis Online (between 2000 and 2018) using the main combination of keywords; climate change and games. Systematic review analysis was based on the three research objectives including; to understand the role of climate change games to ensure children understanding on climate change, to understand the prospects and effectiveness of climate change games among children & to examine how the research area of gaming on climate change develop in global scenario. The major finding of research paper was reiterated that climate games have the potential to educate and enlighten the public towards the real solutions of climate change.
Climate change games as tools for education and engagement
Scientists, educators and policymakers continue to face challenges when it comes to finding effective strategies to engage the public on climate change. We argue that games on the subject of climate change are well-suited to address these challenges because they can serve as effective tools for education and engagement. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the development of such games, many featuring innovative designs that blur traditional boundaries (for example, those that involve social media, alternative reality games, or those that involve direct action upon the real world). Here, we present an overview of the types of climate change game currently available, the benefits and trade-offs of their use, and reasons why they hold such promise for education and engagement regarding climate change.
Game-based Climate Change Engagement: Analyzing the Potential of Entertainment and Serious Games
Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction, 2021
Video games have risen as a popular medium with the potential to become a powerful tool for public climate change engagement. However, little is known about how existing digital games can fulfill this role. This study systematically compiles 150 video games that represent climate change, including serious (n = 109) and for entertainment (n = 41). The games are analyzed by adapting an existing framework (15 dimensions: achievable, challenging, concrete, credible, efficacy-enhancing, experiential learning, feedback-oriented, fun, identitydriven, levelling-up, meaningful, narrative-driven, reward-driven, simulating, social) and statistically compared. The analysis reveals that most games comply with most recommended attributes, but credibility, achievability, meaningfulness, and social features are uncommon or rare. Statistical results comparing serious games and games for entertainment associate six attributes with serious games (achievable, challenging, credible, efficacyenhancing, experiential learning, feedback-oriented), and one (narrative-driven) with games for entertainment. The findings suggest that researchers would benefit from widening their lens to detect previously overlooked opportunities for game-based climate change engagement, communication, and education. The study also provides a systematic mapping of extant games depicting climate change for interested developers, designers and educators.
Video Games and Learning About Climate Change
Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 2021
It is critical to pursue climate change education through a variety of methods, with a variety of audiences, and in a variety of contexts. This short perspectives article describes our experiences as an early-career climate change researcher and an independent game designer in responding to a community challenge posed by a nonprofit organization focused on the potential positive social impact of video games. This was an excellent opportunity to do some strategic thinking around climate change education (e.g., conceptualizing “butterfly effects”). However, we ultimately observed shortcomings in the supports available from educational and funding organizations for climate change knowledge translation using this cutting-edge medium, despite the urgency of climate change. This article follows a dialogic style, alternating between the two authors in order to provide an authentic account of our individual and collective experiences.
Serious games on environmental management
Sustainable Cities and Society, 2017
Serious environmental management games can improve understanding of practical environmental sustainability challenges by offering opportunities to obtain first-hand experiences that may be otherwise too costly, difficult or dangerous to reproduce in reality. Game-based learning (GBL) has been found to increase soft skills, such as critical thinking, creative problem solving and teamwork, as well as to improve cognitive development, learning retention and social learning, which are important for future environmental researchers and professionals. Environmental management games can be applied in educational settings to promote awareness about sustainable resource planning and management among citizens who are increasingly exposed to products of the information age. This paper provides an overview of game-based learning and the state of serious games (SG) for environmental management, offering insight into their potential as effective tools in facilitating environmental education. SGs have been shown to possess numerous qualities that have been connected with improved learning experiences and cognitive development, but research must continue to study the SGs' efficacy. Shortcomings found with games reviewed
GREENIFY: A Real-World Action Game for Climate Change Education
Simulation and Gaming, 2013
The literature on climate change education recommends social, accessible action- oriented learning that is specifically designed to resonate with a target audience’s values and worldview. This article discusses GREENIFY, a real-world action game designed to teach adult learners about climate change and motivate informed action. A pilot study suggests that the game fostered the creation of peer-generated user content, motivated informed action, created positive pressure, and was perceived as a fun and engaging experience.
2019
Climate change education is fundamental in the present society, which is characterized as complex and full of uncertainties. The use of games can help in this task. The prototype of an educational game called “Apicum Game”, which addresses climate change and its effects on marine and coastal ecosystems, was assessed in the present study. Thirty-three students in the sixth grade of a private school played the game and answered questionnaires before and after it. The students who participated in the research generally play video games for fun. Also, they have already heard about climate change, mainly in television and school. It was possible to notice that the majority of students understood the concept of coastal ecosystems, which was addressed in the game. In addition, the game contributed to broadening the conceptual profile of students in relation to the complex concept of climate change. Finally, the game contributed to an increase in the number of actions cited by the students ...
From Traditional to Game-Based Learning of Climate Change: A Media Comparison Experiment
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Widespread climate change engagement is needed to confront our current environmental crises, but it remains difficult to attain. Methods such as visualizations and experiential learning activities, including games and gamification, have been proposed to engage citizens beyond what generic and one-way information sharing can, but rigorous studies comparing the effects of game-based learning with traditional methods are rare. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of a serious game vs. control on learning outcomes related to climate change concepts. We conducted an experiment involving N=105 participants randomly assigned to two treatment groups (a desktop screen-based video game and an immersive VR version of the same game) and a control (a text with charts) and investigated the differences between pre- and post-intervention measures of knowledge. The results show that all three conditions had a large effect on learning, but there were no significant improvement differences b...
International Journal of Designs for Learning
This design case describes the work involved in developing a digital game-based learning environment, work that was part of a PhD research project. The designer was involved in all aspects of the project: conducting research into content that was included in the game, exploring the gaming platform (Second Life), adapting scientific literature for use in the game, consulting with science instructors, building the gaming environment, and writing scripts for objects in the environment. The gaming environment was a fictional town site called Budworm. The game was designed to promote scientific literacy in first and second year science undergraduate students through collaborative work on an open-ended problem related to the management of water resources in a region of western Canada subject to extremes in water availability. One of the design goals was to model the kind of environment that scientists encounter while they formulate research questions, a complex environment that involves c...