Using Simulations to Interactively Engage Students
By
Climate Interactive
February 3, 2025
How can we make climate education more engaging, interactive, and action-oriented? Traditional lectures often fall short in capturing the urgency and complexity of climate solutions. Simulations, however, transform learning into an interactive experience—allowing students to experiment, negotiate, and see the real-time impact of their choices.
At Climate Interactive, we develop interactive simulation tools and facilitated experiences that bring climate science to life. In a recent webinar, Teaching Climate Change Solutions: Innovative Approaches for Using En-ROADS, Climate Interactive’s Ellie Johnston showcased how educators can use our diverse suite of tools and experiences to create meaningful and engaging learning opportunities.
Many of Climate Interactive’s group learning experiences are centered around the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator – an open-access, online climate simulator that has been co-developed with MIT Sloan. The Mastering En-ROADS training program has been developed as a way for educators and other facilitators to become skilled in leading these events. Throughout the webinar, Ellie explained the nuances of these experiences, showcasing what features they can offer:
The En-ROADS Guided Assignment provides a solid background on the En-ROADS simulator itself via a video deep dive, and then challenges students to build their own climate future in the simulator and reflect on their choices. This assignment not only teaches some key lessons on climate science and solutions, but also allows for flexibility in adapting to your class’s needs. It requires minimal preparation and can be completed either in-class or as a take-home activity.
The En-ROADS Climate Workshop is a fantastic way to engage groups with the En-ROADS simulator and remains adaptable for different audiences. During the workshop, participants learn about an array of cross-sector climate solutions and evaluate the implications of these choices on future greenhouse gas emissions, temperature, equity considerations, and more.
The Climate Action Simulation offers a unique opportunity for participants to role-play as international stakeholders who are working to limit global warming to 2°C or less. Players negotiate as leaders in cross-sector groups—from land and agricultural representatives to clean tech entrepreneurs—proposing their solution-based plans for mitigating climate change and seeing the real-time impact of their choices in En-ROADS.
The World Climate Simulation is another way to engage students and promote climate literacy, either online or in-person. Similar to the Climate Action Simulation but instead using the country-oriented C-ROADS Simulator, this role-playing game offers participants a chance to step into the shoes of UN climate negotiators. In this simulation, players act as nations or nation groups who are diligently negotiating on behalf of their region to limit global warming to 2°C or less.
Here’s an overview of the different experiences Climate Interactive offers for educators to use:
*The Climate Action Simulation and World Climate Simulation can be divided up into multiple sessions to accommodate a longer event.
The effectiveness of these simulations has been illustrated in some of Climate Interactive’s peer-reviewed research, providing evidence that our group learning tools serve as an effective method for educating participants and inspiring meaningful action on climate change.
To date, more than 4,000 facilitators have used our tools to engage over 400,000 participants across 174 countries. To track impact and strengthen our community, we rely on users to self-report their events—if you are a facilitator, please remember to register all of your events. Additionally, if you use En-ROADS and/or C-ROADS regularly in your classes as part of the standard course curriculum, please consider filling out this form with some information about you and your course(s).
