The “Serious Games” concept has received increased attention lately. The idea is to use game metaphors and technology to support education and training by leveraging rich visuals, immersive situations, and interactive challenges to make learning more effective. Such approaches are being widely prototyped for the military, health care, emergency management, etc., even while its efficacy has yet to be scientifically proven. In this multidisciplinary project we are developing a prototype serious game for education in nursing, specifically for pediatrics, where such applications are rare. It is our belief that in order to succeed in this area, we have to integrate challenging and life-like patient experiences found in nursing education with engaging game design, realistic art and graphics, and the technological and scientific capability of computer science. We have assembled a team of scientists at SFSU including the School of Nursing, Computer Science, and Design and Industry, and 8 graduate students. Our work plans include the following: a) analysis of the specific application and its applicability to games (i.e. pediatric education); b) design of the game concepts, its flow, character behavior, graphics etc.; c) development of game prototype; and d) formal testing in School of Nursing to determine its educational efficacy.

The project is funded by Microsoft Bay Area Research and is done under the auspices of SFSU Center for Computing for Life Sciences http://cs.sfsu.edu/ccls/index.html

Contact: Prof. Ilmi Yoon