As part of of our work for EUROfusion's Horizon 2020 public engagement remit, we created a three-part learning content package that would guide users through scientific proofs, then through their application in current fusion research, and finally outwards to broader issues on the place of fusion energy in the world in the coming decades.
We collaborated with a number of physicists and stakeholders to first deliver and review both the concepts and the final content.
These were Dr. Nicola Abraham (Physicist, CERN), and Dr. Alf Köhn-Seemann (Senior Researcher, Stuttgart University) who provided initial feedback and contributions.
For the review process, we worked closely with EUROfusion's SES (Socio-Economic Studies) dept, and others at EUROfusion, CEA, and ITER.
Structuring Learning around Game Narratives
The learning content had to be structured in and around a game narrative that in three chapters; each chapter containing six portals, and each in turn holding three knowledge artefacts. Each chapter would be visited sequentially but portals and artefacts therein could be viewed in any order.
Chapter One: Proofs
Devising content for the first chapter, we focused on scientific proofs: In order to comprehend more complex information in the second chapter, we needed to ensure that users would have a grasp of fundamental concepts central to fusion physics: Matter, Stellar Nucleosynthesis, and the Four Forces.
Chapter Two: Practice
The second chapter was to reflect the state of the art in Fusion Research and so covered practical implementations of the above concepts in fusion research: Magnetic Confinement, Fusion Fuels and Materials, Safety, Lifetimes (including radioactive waste), Environmental Concerns (including reactor failure), and Spinoffs into medicine and other fields.
Chapter Three: Prospects
The third and final chapter looked to the future and to debates surrounding fusion energy in the world. It covered practical, political and ethical issues such as Impact, Locations (of reactors), Resourcing, and Competing Techologies, Cost Benefits, Timeframes, and Feasibility. We also questioned some implicit assumptions we encountered along the way: Will having unlimited power ultimately be beneficial, who benefits, and who makes the decisions?
Our conceptual structure for the overlapping content can be seen in the following table:
| Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fusion Energy | Fundamental Concepts | State of the Art | Participatory Futures |
| Time Period | Past | Present | Future |
| User Engagement | Unaware | Comprehending | Experiment |
| Discourse | Forensic | Epideictic | Deliberative |
The first three rows are reasonably self-explanatory, and are contextualised by the fourth. The heading reads discourse but the entries stem from the three forms of rhetoric as delineated by Aristotle. Why Greek philosophy? Because we still utilise these forms in daily life.
Forensic rhetoric encompasses any discussion of past action: here we consider scientific proofs as past actions; those we need to take on board in order to understand what is happening in chapter two.
Epideictic rhetoric is concerned with the present; its root has to do with displaying or showing, of demonstration, play and display. Here we are consider it as both demonstration and display of the proofs presented in chapter one.
Deliberative rhetoric uses examples from the past to predict potential future outcomes. In chapter three, we implement the deliberative with a decision-tree based interactive installation where groups of players make a series of choices, each of which generates future outcomes.
Learning Mechanics
The embedding of this content inside a mobile game required us to design the game play and narrative around a set of learning mechanics. Each of which needed to deploy proven learning techniques and be fully integrated in the mobile application.
Physics is complicated and, for a lot of people, even the basics can be difficult to grasp. We needed to ensure that users could relate to it in more than one way and thus build on their existing knowledge.
By bringing other subjects into the mix, we aimed to communicate both physics concepts and actualities. Common plasmas (lightning, etc.) appear in the text of notable people in history: St Elmo’s Fire was witnessed and documented by Caesar, Darwin, and many others. Their accounts connect users to the idea that this is not all just complex abstraction but exists in, and beyond, the world, in both time and space.
Multiple Modalities
When learners use more than one medium to process a lesson, learning is argued to be more deeply encoded.
In a 2018 study, Husmann and O’Loughlin highlight the value of learning through multiple modalities, which is an effective way to boost memory and understanding.
This follows up on studies including Bui & McDaniel [2015] and a longer study by Carney & Levin [2002] where learners were found to retain more information when content contained complementary illustrations.
The portal artefacts combined image and text to boost learning. We built upon this in the messaging system using a range of mechanics and prototyping extra-game activities.
“The way physics represents itself to the non-expert tends to focus on facts and knowledge, rather than the ways, whys and wherefores by which it is produced. This can lead to a gap in the cultural imaginary and social understanding of physics…
It is timely to address this gap… by bringing the physics into the human experience or by bringing the human back to the centre of physics.”
Dr. Nicola Triscott, The Live Creature and Ethereal Things, 2018
Artefact from the Sun portal in Chapter One
Proof by Input
In the second chapter, a narrative twist means that users must enter missing words to combine (decode) fragmented artefacts. In order to do this, they must read, and re-read retrieved fragments to locate the correct information.
This makes extensions to the narrative possible: Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are able to ask the player specific questions after an artefact is decoded e.g. when the scientist character is 'offline' and another character needs to know the answer. The player is prompted to enter an answer, guided by the content of the artefact. The scientist character is able to verify their answer at a later stage.
Fact Shifting
Rather than provide scientific content in every artefact, factual content can be shifted into the messenger in some instances. This builds upon multiple modalities by varying the experience for users by surprising them with different kinds of content in the portals.
The history of science abounds with esoteric lore. It is replete with strange symbols, illustrations, syntax and experimental practices, weird devices and discoveries. Many of these are connected or hark back to pre-scientific practices through shared materials e.g. in metallurgy and alchemy. These in turn refer to conceptual structures formed in classical antiquity and articulated by Pythagorus, Aristotle and later, Archimedes.
Highly aware of the potential for players to draw undesired conclusions from unscientific material, we ensure that weird content is always given proper historical context.
"Not only the date of some of the [fire-]festivals but the manner of their celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at these ceremonies, might well pass for an imitation of the sun's course in the sky, and the imitation would be especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual declension begins... In these, as in so many cases, the magic force may be supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy: by imitating the desired result you actually produce it."
- J.G Frazer, The Golden Bough
Character Assist
The breadth of knowledge of the expert NPCs can be used to alleviate the cognitive burden on the player after collecting and reading portal artefacts. The messaging system allows knowledge to be conveyed in a variety of forms - tips, hints, explanations, definitions, weblinks, and prompts - either through threads or direct messages. As the messaging system is triggered by gameplay, knowlege is conveyed in threads that are always associable with portal content.
Content: Repetitions, Continuations
Elements of learning content are reiterated across portals, and continue on in others. In one of the Sun afterfacts we read that the "sun is an estimated six thousand degrees Celsius at the surface, 15 million°C at the centre. When the hydrogen gas in the core of the Sun can be squeezed together so tightly that four hydrogen nuclei combine to form one helium atom, this is called nuclear fusion and is reliant on the Sun's enormous gravitational force."
In another artefact, this time in Fusion, we can see that in order to "replicate stellar fusion reactions on Earth, much higher temperatures must be attained, 150 million°C -- ten times hotter than the sun.
At this temperature, two forms of hydrogen can be squeezed together to produce a helium nucleus and release a lot of energy. The gravity that the sun uses to confine the reaction is not possible on Earth so a magnetic cage is used to prevent the charged particles from escaping."
and in a thrid artefact, also in Fusion that all "stars, including our sun, are essentially fusion reactors. The Sun fuses Hydrogen (H) nuclei into Helium (He) in its plasma core, where temperatures are 15 million °C, and the heat travels outward to the rest of the star. At the centre of the Sun, the power created by fusion is 276.5 watts/m3"
Outcomes
After creating the proposed content, we went through a validation process with each of the project stakeholders: After signoff from EUROfusion communications, we held in-depth discussions with EUROfusion socio-economic scientists, CEA; the French nuclear authority, and the comunications team at ITER. At each stage, we navigated the differing, and sometimes conflicting, priorities, politics, interests and pre-occupations of the stakeholders. The process was similar to peer-review, although running over a longer period.
Throughout the process, we continued to make the case of retaining transparency for lay-publics, who oftentimes feel that negatives associated with the nuclear industries are played down in, or even excluded from, the debate.
These included de-simplifying the widely used unlimited power from unlimited resources message, treating fusion as if in the world, as opposed to in an abstracted future, and re-including externalities; those requirements and consequences that are internally, not widely held to be part of the fusion remit, but that for post-anthropocene researcher are clearly and fundamentally important considerations of putting fusion in the world.