Exploring the potential of data-driven educational tools to engage students with climate change complexity

Climate change education is essential for driving a shift toward a sustainable and decarbonised society. Environmental observatories and science labs are central to delivering impactful educational experiences by integrating real-world data from monitoring stations and satellite observations. These tools foster scientific inquiry and empower critical thinking about climate change and its effects.

This abstract introduces FyouTURES, an innovative scenario-making game designed to achieve these objectives by combining real-world data, collaborative learning, and scenario-building exercises. At the heart of the game lies the En-ROADS simulator (Energy-Rapid Overview and Decision Support), a global climate simulator developed by Climate Interactive in partnership with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative and Ventana Systems (Rooney-Varga et al., 2021). En-ROADS offers an interactive platform for exploring how climate policies influence long-term outcomes. Based on a system dynamics model grounded in scientific research and calibrated with historical and projected datasets, it employs differential equations to depict the climate-energy system as a dynamic entity characterised by feedback loops, nonlinearities, and time delays. Users can simulate the effects of policies like electrification, carbon pricing, and improved agricultural practices on variables such as energy prices, global temperatures, and sea-level rise.

Using the En-ROADS simulator, FyouTURES guides players through three rounds spanning the present day to 2100, with milestones in 2030 and 2050. The game adapts the simulator’s categories into six thematic areas: conventional energy, emission control, green areas, energy efficiency, electrification, and green energy. These themes allow participants to explore diverse aspects of sustainability, including renewable energy adoption, deforestation, and CO2 removal technologies.

To enhance decision-making and incorporate uncertainties, we introduced wildcards representing possible events tied to climate and societal factors. These cards reflect different types of uncertainties related to Climate Change – epistemic, aleatoric, and reflexive (Shepherd, 2019) – and challenge players to adapt strategies dynamically, encouraging critical engagement with complex climate issues.

Observations from two game implementations demonstrated how the game helped students in dealing with complex sustainability challenges, creating scenarios that balanced environmental, social, and economic sustainability dimensions (Purvis et al., 2019). The game’s structure promoted collaborative problem framing over simplistic solutions, fostering open-ended reasoning and a deeper understanding of "wicked problems."

By integrating the scientific rigour of En-ROADS, interactive simulations, and collaborative learning dynamics, FyouTURES highlights the potential of data-driven educational tools to engage students with the complexity of climate change. This approach equips learners with critical thinking skills while challenging them to navigate uncertainty and envision pathways to sustainable futures.

Purvis, B., Mao, Y. & Robinson, D. (2019). Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins. Sustainable Sciences, 14, 681–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5

Rooney-Varga, J. N., Hensel, M., McCarthy, C., McNeal, K., Norfles, N., Rath, K., Schnell, A. N., & Sterman, J. D. (2021). Building Consensus for Ambitious Climate Action Through the World Climate Simulation. Earth's Future, 9(12), e2021EF002283. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EF002283 

Shepherd, T. G. (2019). Storyline approach to the construction of regional climate change information. Proceedings of the Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 475(2225), 20190013. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2019.0013