LEEF 2010 Case Studies

IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign demonstrates how our planet is more interconnected, intelligent and Instrumented than ever before. Technical innovations are being leveraged across industry to revolutionize and optimize businesses, cities, and the environment. How can serious games be used to explain the potential of these complex technical innovations?

How can serious games personalize the experience and lend to a better understanding via personal discovery? Join IBM’s Serious Games program manager Phaedra Boinodiris as she discusses this innovative initiative. Ms Boinodiris will showcase case studies on how serious games at IBM are being used to explain how system innovations can make cities smarter, how different systems interconnect and work, and what the impact is on profitability, environmental impact and customer/citizen satisfaction.

The session will include a detailed explanation of the broad 360 degree rollout for these games and how they are being used internally, by business partners, schools, and customers.

Effective team coordination is critical for the safe delivery of care. Development of these skills requires training and practice in an interactive team-based environment. A three-dimensional serious game environment provides an engaging and cost effective alternative to other interactive training solutions such as human patient simulation. In this project we developed a three-dimensional interactive networked system for training of military health care team coordination skills. Although this is a development project with no formal experimental hypothesis, we conducted qualitative evaluations of the design specification and alpha and beta versions of a demonstration prototype. Ease of use, practicality, scope, and effectiveness of the training system will be assessed through heuristic analysis by experts in team training. Our specific aims included:

• Development of an immersive environment software platform for training of health care skills.
• Content development for the training of team coordination skills.
• Prototype of the 3D immersive environment using a military trauma scenario for the purposes of proof-of-concept.
• Planning for an assessment of ease of use and efficacy through an experimental trial at Duke University Medical Center.

The development of 3DiMD provided an effective solution to the problem of expanding the scope of team coordination skill training in military health care environments. In addition, the software platform allowed for the integration of multiple scenarios and work environments (e.g., training modules) for possible expansion into public health care environments.

The current version of BCF 103 Fundamentals of Business Financial Management has limited interaction and antiquated graphics and overall look and feel. Therefore, it was identified as appropriate to modernize this course by revising and updating the graphics and adding student interaction through games and simulations. DAU has determined that the insertion of small instructional games (referred to as “mini games”) at the modular level will be beneficial to students.

The mini games are designed to supplement and reinforce module knowledge concepts after the student has completed the lessons in the module, and just prior to taking each of the eight module level examinations. These games would serve to increase student interaction with the materials, increase retention of the materials learned in both short and long term and to increase student ability to apply the knowledge they gained, by providing students with the situational context to apply the learning objectives.

How to teach Leadership? Harvard Business Publishing and Forio wanted to offer a simulation on leadership styles and team dynamics. Working with subject matter experts, they created a storyline, embedded educational components, added game play challenges and built the online multi-player simulation. Now one of their most popular simulations, the team will share their design and development process. The process steps through identifying the opportunity, setting the goals, building the underlying model, deciding on user interface and choosing the technologies. The discussion will also address bringing the simulation to market, with sales, marketing, delivery and customer support issues.

In responding to emergencies, practice not only makes perfect – it also saves lives. Each month, thousands of emergency responders use CommandSim scenarios to conduct critical training exercises in a virtual environment, building skills that translate into documented performance improvement in the field. Helping to develop essential skills such as command, strategy, tactics, communication, and equipment usage, CommandSim enables responders to train safely, effectively, and economically – helping them in protecting communities and saving lives. In two independent studies, CommandSim has been demonstrated to yield performance in the simulator that is comparable with performance in live exercises, yet the cost and resource demands were substantially less.

This case study is focused on two main points. First, to present lessons learned in developing and selling our commercial, simulation-based training platform for emergency responders, called CommandSim. Many research projects have been pursued in this area, but few make it out of the labs. This case study will explain what makes CommandSim different. Second, to describe how we have applied it in a research grant to help the Philadelphia Fire Department answer a fundamental, essential question: are responders following department protocols?

Electrical workers face potentially fatal situations on a daily basis. Shocks from even low voltage equipment can cause burns, muscular contraction, and even ventricular fibrillation. Environmental conditions, such as moisture, can exacerbate these outcomes dramatically. More recently discovered, arc flash incidents can envelop workers in a ball of fire hotter than the surface of the sun, even at relatively low voltages. Safety regulations have been stepped up significantly in the past 10 years, and many companies are scrambling to comply. Electrical Safety Sim: Low Voltage (ESSLV) is an off-the-shelf game-based training product designed to provide a meaningful understanding of electrical safety through structured interaction.

Alternate reality games (ARGs) have been popular in the entertainment industry, but can they have value for learning? In November 2009, the eLearning Guild hosted an ARG as part of their DevLearn conference. The goal of the ARG was to introduce conference attendees to social media and demonstrate the value of ARGs for learning. Over 200 people played the Zombie Apocalypse ARG both online and in person. The game culminated in a debrief session to discuss the lessons learned.

The Intact Team Training (ITT) simulation provides a virtual collaborative learning environment in support of the Program Management (PM) curricula at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). The simulation presents a role playing environment to learners requiring them to solve program management challenges typically faced by defense program managers. Based on the Experiential Learning (EL) model, the simulation is designed to accelerate skill acquisition by providing the learners with an opportunity to experience a context-specific slice of reality and associated challenges within a “micro-world”, learn from that experience, and eventually transfer the acquired skills to real-life tasks.

Additionally, the system serves as a powerful research tool for capturing explicit and tacit knowledge associated with program management, team communication, collaboration, and decision-making processes. The resultant information can be further leveraged to guide the program management policies and training programs.

With a primary emphasis on soft and higher-order skills, the target learner competencies fostered by the ITT simulation include teamwork, critical thinking, and decision making/problem solving. The target teamwork skills were selected from the key dimensions of Team Dimensional Training (TDT), a research-based training framework designed for turning teams of experts into expert teams.

‘How do you stay always ready in case of disasters in a 24/7/365 facility, where shutting down for drill/practice is not an option?’ Children’s Memorial Hospital and Centrax Corp created an innovative learning solution for Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, to address a hospital training challenge – How to practice disaster preparedness training at a reasonable cost, without endangering the staff or putting patients at risk?

Centrax created a virtual hospital in Second Life replicating the hospital. Employees of the hospital were instructed to create an avatar and move, or fly the avatar thru the hospital inside and out, responding to tasks and obstacles while practicing making critical decisions for safely evacuating the patients.

“The virtual hospital has provided a true-to-life immersive training environment for doctors, nurses, and staff to conduct disaster drills—and improve emergency response planning—without interfering with hospital operations. The project was an overwhelming success and has inspired senior leaders to expand their training in Second Life and share their positive experience with industry peers.”

Education Susie's Cafe - Nutrition Education for K-3 Students (Part 1)

The Susan Byrnes Health Education Center offers eLearning kits related to mental and physical health education for various student age groups. The Susie’s Café Game is part of the Fuel My Special Body kit targeted at students in Kindergarten through 3rd grade. Susie’s Café addresses making healthy food choices and reinforces an understanding of the food pyramid.

In Susie’s Café the learners are presented with information about food choices. To make the knowledge gained in the activity relatable for the students the game uses the Go, Slow, Whoa chart. The chart identifies food choices as go (choose anytime), slow (choose sometimes) or whoa (choose once in a while). The activity has two character hosts: Simon a main character on www.learntobehealthy.org and a new character, Herman, a food analyzing robot.

In the game section of the activity, the learners choose foods from the cafeteria line and place them on trays that represent the five food groups. Their choices are then analyzed by Herman the Food Analyzer. Herman gives feedback on each food choice and tells whether it is a Go, Slow or Whoa food.

Handling Stress for Teens (Part 2)

The Face the Music kit is targeted at students in grades 7-12 and promotes mental health awareness and emotional well-being. The MyStress flash game deals specifically with the topic of stress.

What makes MyStress unique is the simulation treatment used to educate students on various stressors in their lives. The simulation is modeled after a fictional social media profile page. By exploring different elements of the page, the learner is presented with content then asked to think about how they would deal with it.

The simulation uses a text messaging feature to present content and allows the learner to type their responses in the text messaging field. The text messaging function pulls the real timestamp from the local computer.

Blending innovative interactive simulation technology into traditional educational environments has been successfully achieved at the US Naval Academy and the Surface Warfare Officer School. Students joining the military expect greater degrees of activity and experiential learning. Teaching ethical decision making using computer-based interactive simulations over the last four years report positive quantitative and qualitative assessment results. Learn how simulations are used to teach ethical decision making and leadership development, and experience the content. More than 5,000 future Naval officers have learned to be better ethical leaders from this cutting-edge technology.

Attendees will be given the opportunity to participate in one of the facilitated simulations, they will receive a copy of the ethical decision making model and they will know how to access more samples of written moral dilemma cases.

A Planet in Peril: Plagiarism was created in response to a call for book chapter proposals featuring games to teach information literacy concepts. Though the call sought submissions featuring physical games, the game creators felt that a digital game would make an interesting addition to the book. We decided to address plagiarism as it is omnipresent on all campuses. Further, we decided to take a light-hearted approach to the content so that we could keep a higher entertainment factor.

The creators elected to use Caspian Learning's Thinking Worlds to develop a short game that teaches high school and/or college students about plagiarism and how to avoid it. Thinking Worlds lends itself to rapid game creation.

This case study will highlight the project, the Thinking Worlds software (why it was selected and a brief demonstration of how it is used), and the challenges presented by the project. The game will be playable for participants.