A positive attitude towards science is more important now than ever. As science makes its way into every aspect of daily life, trust in science becomes essential. This situation begs the question “how can a positive attitude towards science be encouraged?” The literature shows that there are many different factors that contribute to an individual’s attitude towards science. Many of these factors were unchangeable (such as race, ethnicity, and religion) and so were not considered in this study.
The malleable factors looked into were trust in science, scientific literacy, and scientific curiosity. It was found that scientific curiosity had the most consistent positive relation with a positive attitude towards science and so became the concentration of this study.
This study considers the potential of educational video games as a medium to increase scientific curiosity. A video game with a purpose other than pure entertainment is known as a serious game and has been gaining popularity as a method of education. To create the optimal game for the purpose of increasing scientific curiosity, Cognitive Behavioral Game Design was applied. This called for a clear-cut game with an interesting premise about a defined field of science. The field chosen was Polyomics. Polyomics is an umbrella term that covers many scientific fields that people do not readily understand but that play a large part in their daily lives. Considering that the theme of the game had to be eye-catching, interesting, and attractive, ancient Egyptian mummies were chosen as a premise.
The game created for this study was called History, Unwrapped. The player is tasked with uncovering the mysteries behind a newly found tomb. To complete the game and find out everything known about the person buried there, the players must learn about the basic principles of Polyomics. The game was released to the public along with a questionnaire which was designed to measure the player’s scientific curiosity before and after playing the game. By comparing what each individual scored between the first and second part of the questionnaire, a conclusion was reached whether the game increased, decreased, or did not affect their curiosity in science.