Build a Catastrophe: Using Digital World and Policy Models to Engage
Political Science Students with Climate Change
Abstract
Climate change is a problem that involves science, economics, and
politics. Particularly in the United States, political resistance to
addressing climate change has been exacerbated by a concerted
misinformation campaign against the basic science, a negative response
to how the proposed solutions to climate change intersect with values.
Scientists often propose more climate science education as a solution to
the problem, but preliminary studies indicate that more science
education does not necessarily reduce polarization on the topic (Kahan
et al. 2012). Is there a way that we can better engage non-science
students in topics related to climate change that improve their
comprehension of the problem and its implications, overcoming
polarization? In an existing political science course, “Do You Want to
Build a Nation?”, we are testing a new digital world-building model
based on resource development and consequent environmental and societal
impacts. Students spend half the class building their nations based on
their assigned ideology (i.e., socialist, absolute monarchy,
libertarian) and the second half of the class negotiating with other
nations to resolve global issues while remaining true to their
ideologies. The course instructor, co-author Lennon, and ASU’s Center
for Education Through eXploration have collaborated to design a digital
world model based on resources linked to an adaptive decision-making
environment that translates student policies into modifications to the
digital world. The model tracks students’ exploration and justification
of their nation’s policy choices. In the Fall 2017 offering of the
course, we will investigate how this digital world model and scenarios
built around it affect student learning outcomes. Specifically, we
anticipate improved understanding of the policy trade-offs related to
energy development, better understanding of the ways that different
ideologies approach solutions to climate change, and that both will
result in more realistic diplomatic negotiations in the latter half of
the course. We will report on the technical details of how the digital
world model and scenarios are constructed as well as how students
responded to the scenario.