Climate Detectives: Education for Sustainable Development
Initial prototype. Tested on both phones and computers.
Eleven-year-old walks me through “Water.” Photo published with express permission of parents. The student had a great time, but my dog was over it by the second case study.
For the past year, I have been developing a series of games specifically focused on helping children learn how to solve climate change problems. Called Climate Detectives, it teaches innovative scientific thinking through project-based learning.
I developed the idea for this game series after hearing about the psychological effects Hurricane Florence had on children. In a school systems intervention class, I researched climate change games and curriculums for children, but found few that were both entertaining and educational. In addition, most of what I found encouraged passive learning. The student would have been, at most, expected to watch some educational videos, and would have not been deeply involved in the learning process.
First prototype of game’s introductory video. Made for children aged 7 to 12.
I wanted to make a game that put children in the driver’s seat – one that encouraged active learning. Most of all, I wanted children to develop a sense of self-efficacy and resiliency in the face of climate change.
Games produced/in development: north carolina and the southeast coast(Focus: water), open for business (Focus: sustainability)
Future plans: Texas (focus: drought), israel (Focus: air pollution)
Target audience: Children aged 9 to 15
Process
Over Summer 2019, I created the first draft for Climate Detectives, using Google Sites to create a low-fidelity prototype. The first iteration of this game was global, focusing on broad climate change problems, like how to solve worldwide water shortages.
That summer, I tested the game while traveling. My audience consisted of several elementary- and middle school-aged students (ages 7 through 12) from various U.S. states (Texas, North Carolina, California, Washington, and Virginia). After getting parental permission, the child played through two lessons from the Global Detectives game.
Findings
Global Detectives yielded the best results with students aged 10+, who reported finding the game both educational and fun. Unfortunately, younger students (7 through 9) didn’t seem to engage as deeply with the game, which suggested to me that I should design future iterations of the game for students in middle school. Surprisingly, all parents I interviewed were receptive to Global Detectives, despite some not believing in climate change. I asked one climate-denying father, who joined us in playing the game, how he felt about the subject material, and he told me he was happy with anything that encouraged scientific learning for his daughter.
The First Prototype: Global Detectives (Google Sites)
The Second Prototype: Climate Detectives (Card Game)
meeting the needs of rural learners
Poster presentation of game.
Originally, I planned to make Global Detectives into an exclusively digital game, so that learners could work collaboratively with many others to find solutions to climate problems.
However, qualitative interviews with children and parents in rural parts of the Southeast made me realize that the Internet isn’t easily accessible there. As a result, I expanded my plans for an online global curriculum to include a tabletop game. The first quest is available here. In addition, a deep-dive into CCE literature revealed that the most effective climate change education is personally relevant and meaningful to the learner, and so I focused the game material on issues specific to the Southeast coast.
User testing showed that the name Climate Detectives was viewed more positively than Global Detectives. Students were more likely to think Climate Detectives was about science, while parents were more apt to think it was educational.
results
The approach I took to creating this learning environment was twofold – I wanted to develop something that was grounded in the learning sciences, but also highly entertaining and enjoyable for learners, to increase engagement.
Because I wanted students to find playing different versions of Climate Detectives easy, I tried to make the overarching structure of all editions consistent. Even if the content dramatically differs, every game is made up of several quests, which address different climate change problems in the locality. Each quest in Climate Detectives provides players with scientist roles (complete with coats, magnifying glasses, notebooks, pencils, and other items), three to five case studies of how a specific climate change problem is handled by communities, investigation questions about the case studies, and opportunities to apply them to real or projected problems with “challenge cards.”
The Third Prototype: Climate Detectives (Thinkific Course)
creating the digital game
At the advice of creativity expert Dr. Keith Sawyer, I produced an online version of Climate Detectives: North Carolina and the Southeast Coast. This digital game was developed through Thinkific, an all-in-one online course platform.
The platform allows me to widely share Climate Detectives: North Carolina and the Southeast Coast for free with many students, thus giving me more data on how to improve it. Once this version has been finalized, I’ll move onto producing a tabletop game for students without reliable Internet connections.
Curriculum
The digital game is framed as a detective mystery. Learners are shown a video where they’re told that mysterious problems are damaging our world, and that adults are clueless on how to stop them. It’s up to kids to save the planet, through strategic thinking and imagination.
The players are given five “case files,” which they can solve in any order. The case files focus on five major climate change issues affecting North Carolina and the greater Southeast coast: (1) dirty water, (2) dirty air, (3) rising temperatures, (4) food shortages, and (5) environmental inequity. Each case file has an introductory video, three investigations (e.g. “Investigate: Melted Ice Cream Summer”), one explanation of actualized climate solutions (“Explore: Innovative Ways to Clean Air”) and a final challenge (e.g. “Solve: Operation Rabbit Food.”)
Learners draw out solutions to challenges on a sketchpad or piece of paper, and then submit their ideas. Future editions of the Thinkific platform may include a discussion board for players to share their ideas with others.
results
I tested the game with four elementary-aged children and seven middle-school-aged children, from a variety of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Here were my key findings:
(1) Perhaps unsurprisingly, all players overwhelmingly enjoyed being told that it was up to them to solve climate problems. The ones who were told that only kids could save the planet reported the greatest enjoyment with the game.
(2) One of the middle school students struggled with reading the case studies, because of his dyslexia. When his mother and I read them with him, he had no trouble understanding the scientific content. To make the game more accessible, I’ll need to record voiceovers for each slide deck, or otherwise create educational videos. (Note: He really enjoyed being able to visually communicate his ideas for each challenge!)
(3) Because of the heavy science content, I thought I’d have to add gamification elements to engage the learners – prizes, bells, whistles, magical stars, et cetera. However, almost all of the kids played the game for at least two hours (even ones with neurodevelopmental disorders like ADD and ADHD!) I think this is because the game doesn’t require sustained focus on any one topic. Learners have the freedom to jump around to different case studies, which makes the game continually new and interesting.