2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This analysis aimed to explore the role of a serious game called Decisions for the Decade (D4tD) in teaching students about climate change adaptation and decision making under deep uncertainty within the context of this university’s civil and environmental engineering courses. The game, developed by the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center and the World Bank, was designed to support learning and conversations about long-term investments under uncertainty by making participants more familiar with the process of planning for extremes and climate change impacts while minimizing risk. This work included three cohorts of students: two graduate level courses and one undergraduate level course. The students’ self-reported quantitative and qualitative results were analyzed to determine the impact of the D4tD game in improving student understanding of and attitudes towards uncertainty and robust decision making for climate change adaptation and planning. Quantitative results implied that students found it difficult to make beneficial decisions as uncertainty increased. Students seemed to be more cautious when making collective decisions compared to individual decisions. This collective risk aversion highlighted the benefits of collective learning and decision making for risk management. From the qualitative results, common themes (such as “Informed Decision Making” and “Risk Preparedness”), common keywords (“flood”, “drought”, “climate”, “uncertainty”), and varying emotions observed in student responses indicated students’ awareness of and growing understanding about uncertainty and robust decision making, and pointed to the social/psychological aspects of playing the D4tD game and making decisions under uncertainty. In conclusion, these results attest to the benefit of the D4tD game as a tool within this university and departmental context to improve student understanding of and attitudes towards uncertainty and robust decision making for climate change adaptation and risk management.
(The first author of this paper is a PhD student, an EED member, and would like to self-nominate this paper for the best student paper award. Thank you for your consideration.)