The Mediterranean and climate change:&#160;An online participatory simulation &#8211; Results from the front lines
Authors: Crookall David , Caballero-Leiva Isabel , Sharma Laksh , Promduangsri Pimnutcha , Promduangsri Pariphat 
Published: March 2021

&lt;p&gt;Modern, educational simulation/games (s/g) have a rich legacy, stretching back to the 1960s.&amp;#160; They are used today for communicating science in educational, environmental or governmental organizations.&amp;#160; Other uses are to help groups and organizations conduct research, solve complex problems or make collective decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the last two decades, a particularly powerful, but underused, form of s/g has developed, called participatory simulation (PS).&amp;#160; It contains (elements of) game, simulation, role-play, experience, human interaction, decision-making, negotiation, engagement, stakeholder, etc.&amp;#160; It is often large scale, open ended, goal and results oriented, free form and data driven.&amp;#160; Of course, debriefing is a crucial component.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last summer (2020), the International Oceans-Climate School (IOCS), of the Ocean Open University (OOP), France, planned to organize an in-person summer school with a PS as its capstone event.&amp;#160; We then postponed and made it an autumn school.&amp;#160; It then became clear that this also was impossible, and so, after some hesitation, we scrambled to turn it into an online PS (OPS).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The theme was &amp;#8220;&lt;em&gt;The Mediterranean and climate change: Impacts, people, action&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#8221;.&amp;#160; Our overarching goal was to help participants understand the &lt;strong&gt;oceans-climate nexus&lt;/strong&gt; and to become better &lt;strong&gt;ocean-climate-literate stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;#160; The IOCS is an official event of the &lt;strong&gt;Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission&lt;/strong&gt; (IOC) of UNESCO, as part of the &lt;strong&gt;UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The school ran over three days, with the OPS over two days.&amp;#160; We searched for a platform that would accommodate the flexibility needed for the OPS; we chose Discord.&amp;#160; We had participants originating from Brazil, France, India, Italy, Iran, Spain, Tunisia and the UK; ages ranged from 19 to 60 years.&amp;#160; It was a great success.&amp;#160; A detailed, online feedback form two weeks after the event collected participants&amp;#8217; opinions, including:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;#8220;It was a wonderful experience.&amp;#8221;, :I felt very good with all the participants.&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;When I describe the experience to friends I always say that it was something really useful for my personal and professional growth.&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;It was a very enriching experience for me to meet all these people with different training and knowledge, coming from different countries.&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;Enriching moments, so much more to discover.&amp;#8221;, &amp;#8220;What a great experience! I felt happy, engaged and surrounded by beautiful minds.&amp;#8221;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;We will run the event again in the Spring and the late summer or autumn, with different geoscience themes.&amp;#160; The success of the October 2020 event raises several research questions, including:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;How do the online and the in-person versions compare?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;What are the advantages and drawbacks of each?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Which is more effective for what objectives and what results?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;How do the two versions stack up in regard to conducting research on such events?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;What are the implications of OPS for geoliteracy?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our presentation will describe the event in more detail, offer tentative answers to the above questions, and help you decide if you wish to participate in the next event.&amp;#160; Co-authors include both organizers and participants.&lt;/p&gt;