Candidate
Diogo Fernandes Santos
Date, Time and Location
June 25, 14:30, Sala de Atos FEUP
President of the Jury
António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho, PhD, Associate Professor with habilitation, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto.
Vogais
Lynn Rosalina Gama Alves, PhD, Associate Professor, Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciências Professor Milton Santos, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brasil;
António Maria Salvado Coxito Granado, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Ciências da Comunicação, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa;
Liliana Filipa Vale Costa, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, Universidade de Aveiro;
Cátia Ferreira, PhD, Assistant Professor, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa;
João Carlos de Matos Paiva, PhD, Associate Professor with Habilitation, Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto;
Carla Susana Lopes Morais, PhD, Assistant Professor with Habilitation, Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto (Supervisor).
The thesis was co-supervised by Professor Nelson Troca Zagalo, Full Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro.
Abstract
The adoption of multimedia tools and objects came with challenges and opportunities for everyone involved in science communication and science learning initiatives. People interacting with the content, with the producer, or even the transformation of the consumer in a producer. Participation and dialogue become staples in science communication, with scientists and research units having to embrace this brave, but not so new world. In this experience, transmedia served as a guideline to think about science communication from within a research unit in the multimedia space.
In this work that was designed within Chemistry Research Unit of University of Porto (CIQUP) and shaped by ideas like participation, collaboration, dialogue, and interactivity, scientists were invited to co-create a fun serious video game to communicate their science (nanoparticles for drug delivery). To combine a serious portrait of science with fun elements that are typical of games, scientists were crucial to define theme, systems, mechanics, and narrative. It was developed a prototype (Nano Entregas) aimed to communicate about nanoparticles for drug delivery. The prototype was played by 170 participants from the 7th to the 11th school level in an experience aimed to measure the potential of the tool in two domains: as a science communication object capable of transmitting knowledge about nanoparticles and other scientific concepts associated with the subject; and as a game. To do so, data was collected through the implementation of a questionnaire and through the application of a serious game evaluation scale. The video game was also played by researchers and chemistry teachers, from whom observations were collected. Before the core gaming experience, the prototype was tested with the target audience (27 of the 170 participants), and three participants with no previous connection with the project (one teacher, one researcher, and one doctor). The prototype developed has shown potential to be used in multiple scenarios (formal and informal) where nanoparticles can be a subject to present. Most players (from the 170 students) have captured the basic information that was delivered. One was the metaphor used to introduce the size of nanoparticles within the real world scale of things, with 66,5% of the participants being able to deduce it from the bits of dialogue between the in-game characters. The percentage of correct answers were also higher in the three scientific questions: 85,3%, 78,2%, and 58,2%, respectively. The prototype was well received by the audience, with the 11 Factors in the scale collecting positive notes. The experience shows that scientists are eager to collaborate in challenging and innovative strategies to communicate with the audience, with the metaphor that shaped the prototype in terms of theme, narrative, systems, and mechanics, emerging directly from their contribution. The prototype shows that science can be portraited with seriousness in a video game that aimed for fun. Dialogue can be key to quickly find a common ground between researchers and communicators or developers, which then can result in the development of engaging tools to communicate about complex topics. Younger generations understand video games’ language. And, through it, scientists, communicators, teachers, and parents, can present and share scientific knowledge in a fun and interactive learning exercise.
Keywords: science communication; game development; transmedia; research units; chemistry; nanoparticles.