Pandemic Pivot: Designing a Participatory Simulation to Support Social Distancing and Remote Learning

Participatory simulations usually aim to bring simulations off screen into a shared physical space with people acting as agents in the simulation. In this paper, we describe considerations and design decisions related to creating a participatory simulation for use in learning settings with restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic where typical classroom interactions were no longer allowed. We describe how our design decisions might help children both "dive in"and "step out"to understand more about pollinators and the prairie in spite of various restrictions on how exactly they can interact with each other. Our simulation, Buzz About, uses augmented reality in a multi-device setting to allow learners to explore the impacts of a prairie restoration on local beneficial pollinators from the perspective of a bee. We focus on supporting scenarios where the children may be in a shared space with social-distancing requirements or participating remotely, but synchronously.