Students in Harvey Mudd College\u2019s new Games for Climate Change Literacy course learn how to communicate climate change research via a widely beloved tool: analog games. Using human-computer interaction methodologies and behavioral theories, the students design non-digital climate change literacy games to inspire positive behavior change in players. The course specifically investigates the role of games in influencing climate change attitudes and building literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynn Kirabo, Maria M. Klawe Assistant Professor of Climate and CS in the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment, developed the course, which she\u2019s teaching for the first time this semester. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStudents design games that are grounded in climate change literature or scenarios to guide student rationale and arguments about different game design decisions or mechanics,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This semester, students will design one gift game for a classmate\u2014an individual project designed to allow students to learn and use different game design tools. Students design the gift games based on their classmates\u2019 attitudes toward climate change. In other projects, they\u2019ll design games in teams. Students will be assigned a specific domain (energy, food, transportation, etc.) and behavioral theory to guide their game design choices for each project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy game was designed as a gift for a classmate who was semi-hopeful about climate action but skeptical that our actions matter,\u201d says Connor Seto \u201924. \u201cI created We The People <\/em>as a trivia game which teaches players about past collective organizing movements which had spurred meaningful climate action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Natalie Burton SCR \u201924 designed a game called Extract from the Frog Stack<\/em>, inspired by their gift game partner\u2019s interest in ecology and the idea of how individual choice impacts someone\u2019s contribution to climate change.\u00a0\u201cYou play as an ambitious entrepreneur and scientist\u00a0who has developed an elixir of youth, synthesized entirely from materials found in a nearby swamp,\u201d they say. \u201cThis swamp is the only known habitat for the\u00a0Rana temporaria iuvenale<\/em>, a frog-like creature whose pheromones have transformed\u00a0the ordinary dirt, plants and animals of this swamp into youth-granting substances. To increase your profits, your goal is to extract as many resource items from the swamp as\u00a0possible. But be careful! If the frog dies, you will lose everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy the end of the class,\u201d Kirabo says, \u201cstudents will have had the opportunity to design game artifacts that inspire positive change, collaborate with others who may or may not hold the same view towards climate change, decompose a climate change literacy problem from a game design perspective, learn about rapid prototyping, playtest and iterate on their game ideas and, hopefully, enjoy the entire process.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Games for Climate Change Literacy is part of the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment\u2019s Climate Interventions focus area, one of four (the other three areas are Climate Dynamics, Climate Impacts and Climate Contexts). The course is offered to students in climate-focused joint majors (the first of which is Chemistry and Climate; more joint majors are being developed). There will also be seats available to students across the 5Cs who are not in climate-focused joint majors but are interested in leveraging transformational games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seto\u2019s experience so far has been positive and perhaps even transformative. \u201cOne memorable moment from this class,\u201d he says, \u201cwas that when play testing this game, I learned that one of my classmates is an activist mentioned in one of my trivia questions. It was a really cool reminder that progress is won by everyday people organizing for change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students in Harvey Mudd College\u2019s new Games for Climate Change Literacy course learn how to communicate climate change research via […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":12872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,967,638,30],"class_list":["post-12868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-science","category-faculty","category-general-feed","category-hixon-center","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12868"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12933,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868\/revisions\/12933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}