Decide's tentacle stretched eastbound up to Malaysia where the renown Petrosains Science Centre of Kuala Lumpur embedded it in their programmes targeted at students, teachers and educators from government schools and several private education institutions. But let's cut a long story short and let Mr Faiz tell us their own experience with Decide.
"Petrosains collaborate with agencies such as Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, to name a few. We have established years of strong partnership amongst these agencies in order for us to promote the Public Understanding of Science and Technology (PUSAT) to the public in a strategically efficient manner.
As soon as we tried playDECIDE out a couple of years back with our staff, we noticed that this game is a good platform to entice our audience to talk about science revolving current pressing issues such as Climate Change, HIV/AIDS, Nanotechnology and many more. Occasionally, through seminars and conventions, some of the above mentioned agencies invited us to conduct workshops with teachers and students.
And in some of our special projects dedicated to conserving the environment through science, we rope in teacher and educators to experience playDECIDE specifically on Climate Change. It is hoped that it will create the ripple effect as for them to try it out with their students and teacher trainees.
Events and invitation were organised by our partners or we conducted our own tailor-made programmes and activities. Audience are groups of science, maths and environmental education teachers and students of secondary schools as we observed that the level of language in most of the topics is more suitable for 15 years and above students who can comfortably debate on topics which are a little bit familiar and closer to them such as Climate Change. To further enhance and connect to the topic of discussion, we still usually induce and engage the audience with activities extracted from the IGLO website.
In one occasion, a seminar organized by one of our collaborators and a university on Nanotechnology, we've experienced breaking up audience of 76 pax teachers and a few education officers into a smaller groups of 7 or 8 each. In other words, there were more than 10 groups formed, with only 8 facilitators around! An unexpected turnout! A quick turnaround was to place 2 facilitators to manage 5 groups, and it worked well. The success factors were clear instructions, good facilitation skills and training of facilitators prior to execute playDECIDE (facilitators were combination of Petrosains staff, lecturers and students of higher learning institutes), plus of course, a great supportive and understanding audience. Another key success factor was the induction of related hands-on activities prior to the real event.
Some teachers asked for the playDECIDE kits and we gave them away. As for others, they wanted to look up onto the website to explore for more ideas and topics. Petrosains came up with a Malay translated version of playDECIDE on Nanotechnology to break the language barrier amongst the participants in the future. We also found out that the topic is new and unfamiliar to most Malaysian audience as it is not in the education syllabus currently. Nevertheless, we had very positive feedbacks from teachers. That's why our collaborators eagerly wanted to continue promoting such event from time to time and incorporate such activities, as evidence showed audience gained deeper understanding about many unprecedented current issues while playDECIDEing.
Ideally, it would be great if some related activities could be incorporated along, as a means of set induction or ice-breaking phase, prior to playDECIDE. These hands-on activities do help in connecting participants' prior knowledge to the topic and make them more comfortable debating the issues presented. Related documentaries and films like The Inconvenient Truth, 11th Hour and Home really jived in as well.
The playDECIDE topics are unique and very relevant. I strongly believe that a science centre like us, has to keep on promoting such good game as it benefits everyone especially those who are willing to share their views and actions. After all, we are sharing the same planet Earth, full of dynamic global issues, to be understood and live with".
Gianfilippo Parenti and M Faiz Mat Isa
FUND is a project funded by the European Commission (