Tierschutz erLeben: Devising a “Comic Automaton” to Innovate Learning

The paper presents Tierschutz erLeben, an ongoing German R&D project that explores a gamified learning concept called the "Comic Automaton," designed to improve how animal welfare and farm management are taught, primarily to agricultural students. The authors argue that current frontal teaching is unsatisfactory, and that fully realistic 3D simulations are too time-consuming and incomplete to be efficient. Their proposed solution is an interactive comic in which learners make decisions that drive the narrative forward, with the story automatically generated and illustrated in response to each choice, including consequences of wrong decisions such as a calf weakening or dying from insufficient colostrum.

The methodology is primarily conceptual and prototype-driven. The team first distills current animal welfare content into a linear "happy path" comic, then expands it into a decision tree with branching "unhappy paths," implemented in the Unity engine with a comic plug-in. Two user workshops evaluated precursor prototypes using the User Experience Questionnaire, with a classic learning game scoring higher on perspicuity and efficiency and a "learning machine" prototype scoring higher on attractiveness, stimulation, and novelty, with only novelty reaching statistical significance. The paper notes that open design questions remain, such as whether learners should be returned to earlier branching points after an error or be given a repeated storyline to correct course.

The authors conclude that the Comic Automaton is a promising approach for conveying decision-making and consequences in animal welfare, and potentially in other domains. Work is ongoing, with the next step being the development of a Story Engine module for automatic generation of the interactive comic, and a further usability and usefulness workshop planned for the following autumn.