New Card Game for Integrated Life and Environmental Science Education: Remediate

I had the incredible honour of presenting at the STANSW 7-10 conference at the beautiful Taronga Zoo in August this year. I’m not a teacher myself, but rather a scientist at The University of Sydney and now an amateur game designer. My colleagues and I at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology have spent the last two years designing and developing a synthetic biology card game, Remediate!

In Remediate, players become scientists using genes to supercharge little microbes to collect plastic that is polluting exotic environments. Equipped with the gene for PETase, a PET plastic-degradation enzyme, the microbes can digest this plastic as a food source. The scientist who builds the best plastic-eating microbe wins!

In addition to being a fun game, every mechanic in Remediate is based on real biology from the microbes (such as Colin the E. coli) to the genes (like Crispr Cas9 or Flagella). Players learn the complicated interplay of biology, chemistry, and environmental science in a subtle way that imitates scientific research.

Recognizing Remediate’s value as an educational tool, our team spent the last few months developing a suite of educational materials that are mapped to specific points in the new Stage 4 and 5 curriculum. The materials feature Remediate characters or concepts and use them to teach topics such as organism classification, polymer chemistry, cellular respiration, and much more. Copies of the game and the entire educational suite were made available to attendees of the Remediate conference session.

This isn’t the first time Remediate has been used in schools. In Term 2, I worked with Year 9 and 10 students at Mallacoota High School in regional Victoria, delivering a guest lecture on synthetic biology and getting them started with Remediate. Our Centre’s Regional Schools Ambassador also went out to Mallacoota and delivered a 2-day program of practical activities that go along with the themes of Remediate. Students had so much fun, we’ve been invited back for Term 4!

Remediate is still in beta development until the final version is released in December 2024. We are looking to the future and are keen to continue developing the Remediate Educational Suite and distribute copies of the game and the materials to as many schools as possible from Term 1, 2025. If you would like more information or would like to use Remediate in your classroom please contact our team at coesb-info@mq.edu.au.