Seiko Ishihara-Shineha

Tremendous advances in science and technology have increased the complexity of their social implications, or STS issues. In recent years, serious games have garnered attention as a tool for fostering diverse perspectives on STS issues. This paper presents educational research from Japan on a course in which undergraduate students design and develop serious board and card games on STS issues. Since 2016, students have created games on topics such as climate change, genome editing, reproductive medicine, artificial intelligence, food risks, and femtech. A key aspect of this approach is its ability to engage students with low interest in science and technology in science communication activities through creative game design. Designing a game requires understanding the essential content of an STS issue and modeling its system. This involves identifying diverse frames and actors, trade-off structures, and dilemmas and incorporating them into the game system. Through this process, students are encouraged to delve deeply into specialized knowledge and consider issues from multiple perspectives. Furthermore, the games are exhibited at Science Agora, a major science communication event in Japan. This provides an invaluable opportunity for the students who created the games to interact directly with scientists and members of the public interested in science. This approach is a novel attempt to engage a demographic that is typically less involved in science in science-society dialogue. Our research indicates that serious game design classes effectively promote awareness and understanding of the diverse framing and dilemma structures surrounding STS issues. In this paper, we present practical insights from the course and discuss opportunities and challenges in using the game design process to bridge the gap between science communication research and practice by engaging diverse audiences.