The goal of a serious game is to teach. We want to give people systems of information so that they can use to better prepare and handle emergency situations like pandemics.

Learner Needs and Content Design

We conducted a survey of nine members of our intended audience to get a baseline of what they know to uncover their learning needs. We basically coded these topics into three content domain areas – management, scientific and personal. Though fewer respondents identified management subjects as a learning need, our research indicates their personal welfare is impacted by knowledge of how the disease is being handled. For more survey responses, see our Interviews wiki page.

Learning Outcomes

Based on our understanding of their learning needs we cast a vision of what they will gain after playing this game.

At the end of this game the learner will be able to:

• Raise their own awareness of the factors that go into preparing and managing a pandemic
• Understand the types of decisions that are made at a national and global level and how it might effect them
• Plan and prepare for a pandemic, stockpile food, adopt good hygiene practices, investigate local emergency planning procedures in their community, workplace and nation
• Interpret media information and not become vulnerable to panic, threats or misleading advertising
• Change their attitude toward emergency planning and take health information seriously
• Unlearn any myths about hygiene, food, immunity, governmental preparedness, and viruses
• Gain basic understanding of pathology and epidemiology

These outcomes are worded in terms of activities and attitudes that are measurable and can be used as a way to assess the effectiveness of the game.

Learning Theory and Solution

In this section we look at what literature exists that we can weave together to form our solution. Most notably we draw from the following theories:

Multiple Intelligences – out of Howard Gardner’s research we glean that there are eight styles ranging from linguistic to visual that determine how people approach learning. One of the most valuable takeways from his research are that there are multiple entrypoints to understanding. Good curriculum recognizes this and provides a diversity of entry points. Games typically reward a diversity of learning styles, visual learners especially enjoy the mix of media. But our game goes beyond just appealing to one style of learning, it provides a diverse number of perspectives on the same topic from different mini-game genres. In this way we not only recognize that there are multiple entrypoints we systematically introduce them.

Experiential Learning – a school of thought that blends into areas of constructivism and progressive ideologies out of which we glean a set of findings pioneered by Dewey. His research suggest that learners should be engaged in authentic learning experiences that immerse them into actual problems and provide experiences that encourage successive learning. He underscores that not all experiences are good for learning. To encourage future learning the topics must be fair, matched to the student’s interests and abilities and appropriately reinforced by the teacher. We are very sensitive then about the value of having student’s construct their own understanding on a topic while presenting them activities that are authentic and encourage future learning.

Cognitive Learning – the design presented in this paper stands on a cognitive approach to learning. Our aim is to build understanding and not just acquisition of facts. We believe that true learning occurs through understanding. So we model expert ways of thinking about disease and emergency preparedness. Our strategy is to classify the declarative, procedural, and strategic knowledge needed to think like an expert and present learning goals to teach them. Towards that end, we present stories and simulators to give learners a sense of the relationship between those elements. We lean on the learner being intrinsically motivated to pursue learning out of an intrinsic curiosity to toy with subject-matter. We build up these sophisticated understandings through use of scaffolding. Successful learning is measured on the ability of these learners to transfer learning to new situations.

Behavioral Learning – it can be argued that video games can be highly behavioral in their designs offering very extrinsic reward-based motivation and that much of gaming is stimulus-response oriented. It could also be argued that subjects of emergency response and survival should be taught in a very behavioral way where emphasis is on repetition to encourage instant recall in the event of crisis. We can all remember “stop, drop, and roll” imperatives when learning about fire safety. We were taught to memorize the strategy because in fact it goes against our human nature to be still. To overcome basic instinct we needed to reinforce message through songs and easy to remember jingles. Despite our mainly cognitive approach, we recognize there are strengths from behaviorism we want to incorporate. A system of rewards that motivate learning using scores, ratings and gifts to encourage review and reflection. Availability of simple rote exercises to provide a break from intense lessons and to reinforce subjects that have already been learned. Our approach is to use behaviorism to motivate and reinforce the connections we’re building cognitively.

Prior Understanding and Scaffolding – we are aware that the learner comes with a set of prior beliefs and myths that will affect learning about avian flu (Duckworth). If we don’t take those understandings into consideration learners may revert back to those understandings after the game. With the case of the bird flu especially people have heard a lot in the news, but still may have some myths about disease management and the government’s preparedness. We intend to leverage those understanding early and then implement a system of scaffolds to connect them to higher levels of understanding. The scaffolds enable us to form bridges for learner to access our material. For example, we chunk our content areas into smaller mini-games to allow the learner to focus on one topic before moving on to the next. We stack those chunks together to form the complete picture of the curriculum.

Play, games and learning – drawing from research from James Paul Gee, Jean Piaget, Johann Huizniga and Lev Vygotsky we know learning happens through play. Play is basic way that children have learned from inception. We can imagine that through play learners actively construct their own understanding of a topic. In our work we create different types of play that feel more open-ended and others that are quite goal directed. We also recognize from Gee’s work that gaming in itself is a form of literacy. We look at creating games that are fun for people who may not be literate in gaming.

Finally, a school of thought or ideology that doesn’t get treatment here comes out of Noddings work on the Domains of Care. We recognize that the learner is a whole individual and we attempt to provide links to other domains like family and community so the learner takes the content from the game and uses it in the real world.

Toy-based simulation

A simulation that does not advance in real-time but gives the player opportunity to reflect and explore using mini-games or toys. Time in the simulation is advanced when the player makes a decision using their toy. Toys allow for a deeper dive into the subject matter giving the player control over specific strategies.

For example: The player might want to experiment on the effect of their vaccine distribution decision by tinkering with input variables like time to develop vaccine, population, and mutation probability. They might access a toy that would present these variables and let them tweak the variables. Once they are happy with the results, the data gets dumped back into the main simulation.

We expect that much of the accidental learning will occur just in tinkering with the toys.
Through tinkering people construct their own understanding of the topic which is sometimes more rewarding. Yet, the mini-games will provide some goal direction and feedback so learning is ensured.

Toys also allow us to chunk a complex subject into small bites. Each toy has one focused goal. Through the course of the game, the toys evolve to be more sophisticated requiring understanding of prior knowledge. The toys are the scaffolds we use to progress the student to higher levels of learning.

Not all toys are simulators, examples of toys used in this game:

• Driving a truck (Action)
• Distributing vaccine in a busy waiting room (Action)
• Matching virus DNA (Puzzle)
• Shopping Frenzy (Simulation)

Finally, toy-based simulations are more casual and don’t require huge investments of time to play. You can gain satisfaction by playing one short 5-10 minute game and then returning later to finish the chapter. This feature will be attractive to female learners who on average have less leisure time than men.

In summary the benefits of toy-based simulation are:

• More control and instant feedback
• Depth of experience into one aspect of a simulation without getting overwhelmed
• Provides pauses in gameplay to pursue directed goals
• Scaffolding upon basic toys allows us to slowly introduce advanced topics
• Toys might allow them to test out multiple scenarios before executing on a decision.
• Easy way to introduce non-gamers to simulations
• People love to tinker, they enjoy open-ended play
• Promotes accidental learning without sacrificing learning goal attainment

For a summary of the learning design and how it marries into game design see the PowerPoint Learning Design video.