Design and Development of a Multilevel Interactive Climate Education Platform

Climate change education is a key determinant of the public's understanding and response to the current planetary crisis; this need for climate education tools targeting various age populations is addressed in this dissertation. The overall goal of this research was to develop a digital platform that effectively connects with primary (8–10 years), secondary (11–18 years) and adult learners through interactive, interactive content. The study used mixed methods. Pre- and post-intervention survey data were collected quantitatively to assess changes in climate knowledge levels, engagement degrees as well as attitudes towards individual-perceived climate actions using a sample size of 300 respondents divided into three different age groups.

The results indicated that climate literacy improved significantly across all age groups. Early learners’ understanding of basic climate concepts increased by 40%; for adolescents and adults, the increase was 35% and 30%, respectively. Analyses of engagement data showed that users spent, on average, 45 minutes per session using the site, favouring interactive simulations and quizzes. The interactive learning paths and personal assessments that were part of the platform were among the highest rated features (85%) reported for usefulness.

Qualitative feedback from user experience testing confirmed that the digital platform supports making complex climate science accessible through a multimodal approach to representational diversity, including video, animations, interactive info graphics, as well as other valid multimedia applications. Users reported high cognitive gains in understanding and retaining knowledge because affordances such as narrative-driven design worked well with younger ages, while more graphical representations/more raw data did so for older ages.

The multilevel interactive climate education platform can satisfy the educational requirements of different age stages and has great potential to promote enhancing climate literacy and facilitate transformational climate learning. It also provides a useful reference for optimizing principles of platform design and interaction function from the perspective of user experience. In the future, it would be meaningful to further carry out studies on large-scale applications of the integrated platform as well as its role in more representative samples.