LEARNING FACTS FOR FUN AND GLORY

We aim to address the lack of fluency afflicting the current debate on climate change and the transition towards sustainable energy production. Our teaching project called Prometeruse introduces secondary school students to coursework designed by scientists. The project is designed to guide them through the greatest challenge facing their generation and engage them in a practical experiment to show them that they can take part in overcoming it. Given the volume of information required to build a comprehensive picture of developments in the energy sector and the climate sciences, and the practice needed to juggle units, figures and technical terms, we rely on an serious game to help students do most of the learning by themselves. The game takes the form of an internet quiz in which facts and figures underpinning the energy and climate crisis are broken down into bite-sized trivia questions. We motivate students to play by offering the chance to compete with classmates in internal rankings and with peers abroad for the prestige of their school. To encourage collaboration and dissemination, students taking the test can team up with friends and answer the quiz questions simultaneously. Each player is personified on-screen with an avatar endowed with rudimentary expression and interactions. We are investigating whether personifying the experience can boost its appeal among students. Exposing the performance of students to friends also adds to a mild form of peer pressure to the game and incites players to remember from their mistakes. As schools compete with each other, they conquer symbolic land parcels on a publicly accessible internet map that offers a graphical representation of the ranking table. This method aims to boost enthusiasm for the game by forging team spirit and pride. Comparing results from students on a standardised test on energy and climate questions before and after the introduction of the serious game in the course of the coming school year will quantify the success of the gamification strategies that we investigated. Successful avenues could be explored further in games that support conventional school classes or even in areas of fact-based learning beyond the national syllabus, such as introducing citizens to how democratic, legal or financial institutions function.