“Stickier” learning through gameplay: an effective approach to climate change education

As the impacts of climate change grow, we need better ways to raise awareness and motivate action. Here we assess the effectiveness of an Arctic climate change card game in comparison with the more conventional approach of reading an illustrated article. In-person assessments with control/reading and treatment/game groups (N = 41), were followed four weeks later with a survey. The game was found to be as effective as the article in teaching content of the impacts of climate change over the short term, and was more effective than the article in long-term retention of new information. Game players also had higher levels of engagement and perceptions that they knew ways to help protect Arctic ecosystems. They were also more likely to recommend the game to friends or family than those in the control group were likely to recommend the article to friends or family. As we consider ways to broaden engagement with climate change, we should include games in our portfolio of approaches

Impact of gameplay vs. reading on mental models of social-ecological systems: a fuzzy cognitive mapping approach

Climate change is a highly complex social-ecological problem characterized by system-type dynamics that are important to communicate in a variety of settings, ranging from formal education to decision makers to informal education of the general public. Educational games are one approach that may enhance systems thinking skills. This study used a randomized controlled experiment to compare the impact on the mental models of participants of an educational card game vs. an illustrated article about the Arctic social-ecological system. A total of 41 participants (game: n = 20; reading: n = 21) created pre- and post-intervention mental models of the system, based on a "fuzzy cognitive mapping" approach. Maps were analyzed using network statistics. Both reading the article and playing the game resulted in measurable increases in systems understanding. The group reading the article perceived a more complex system after the intervention, with overall learning gains approximately twice those of the game players. However, game players demonstrated similar learning gains as article readers regarding the climate system, actions both causing environmental problems and protecting the Arctic, as well as the importance of the base- and mid-levels of the food chain. These findings contribute to the growing evidence showing that games are important resources to include as strategies for building capacity to understand and steward sustainable social-ecological systems, in both formal and informal education

Desmin-regulated Lentiviral Vectors for Skeletal Muscle Gene Transfer

Lentiviral vectors (LVs) are highly attractive as a gene therapy agent as they are able to stably integrate their genomes in both dividing and nondividing cells and, in principle, provide long-term therapeutic benefit. However, their performance in skeletal muscle in adult animals has, to date, been disappointing. In order to gain clearer insight into their utility in this tissue type, we have conducted an extensive quantitative comparison of constitutive and muscle-specific promoter activities in skeletal muscle and nonmuscle systems following LV delivery in cell lines and neonatal mice. Our data show that LV delivery to hind leg skeletal muscle of neonatal mouse results in long-term transgene expression in adulthood. We find that the human desmin (DES) promoter/enhancer is the first muscle-specific control region to match the activity of the highly active constitutive human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) promoter/enhancer in skeletal muscle within a LV context both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, the DES promoter/enhancer provides six- to eightfold greater expression per viral copy than the muscle-specific human muscle creatine kinase (CKM) promoter/enhancer. DES also confers a more reproducible and tissue-specific transgene expression profile compared to CKM and is therefore a highly attractive regulatory element for use in muscle gene therapy vectors