Face the Case

FACE THE CASE

A Health Literacy Game

Overview

Face the Case is a quest to acquire the skills in order to solve a variety of health and human services cases in a role-playing environment that is engaging, challenging and visually interesting

Case descriptions are delivered through the PDA, which also keeps track of the skills, skill points and collaborators for each player

Intended audience is undergraduate nursing, health science, and social work students

Overview – Screenshots

The game takes place in a world based on the JMU community.

Players receive cases on the PDA.

Overview – Screenshots

Players answer questions to get points. Once they have enough points they can buy skills.

Overview – Game Play Sequence

Buy Bling

CommunicationsMarket

CollaborationCafe

InfoEmporium

CultureBazaar

ReviewCase Study

LoginFace the

Case

Play the Game

http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu

Background

What is a game? Levels Open-ended quest New skills/powers Rewards Ability to fail and try again High scores

What is fun? Sensual Surprising Challenging

Audience

1,200 undergraduate allied health students (e.g. future nurses and social workers)

Game is aimed at a population of pre-professionals whose course of study is preparing them for careers in which they will interact with a diverse population of patients/clients who have complex and diverse health and human services needs

Pedagogy

What is health literacy? Health Literacy: The degree to which individuals

have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.

What kinds of skills are needed to achieve health literacy? Information seeking Communication Cultural competence

How can these skills be developed in a game?

Technologies

Graphical game interface and avatar creation app are Adobe Flash objects (SWFs) running in a web browser

User profiles and history, skill sets and inventories, cases and case histories, etc. are stored in a SQL Server 2005 Express database

Flash client and database communicate via ASP .NET Web Services (SOAP)

An ASP .NET web application is used to self-create player profiles, to host Flash content, and to manage database content

Technologies

InternetInternet

Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0

Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0

SQL Server Express

SQL Server Express

Browser with Flash

plug-in

Browser with Flash

plug-in

Browser with Flash

plug-in

Browser with Flash

plug-in

Browser with Flash

plug-in

Browser with Flash

plug-in

SOAP (web services)

SOAP (web services)

SOAP (web se

rvices).NET C#, SQL

Tech

nolo

gie

s –

Data

base

Technologies – Screenshot

Project Team

Jennifer McCabe (JMU): Game designer, project manager, subject matter specialist, content creator

Kevin Hegg (JMU): Game designer, programmer, database developer

Venture Interactive, LLC: Flash programming, animation, graphic illustration

CIT: Graphic design support, instructional technologists

JMU nursing students: Game testers

Resources & Timeline

Budget: $75,000 to $100,000 Timeline: One to two years People: many…

Lessons Learned

Browser issues (technology issues) Student comments (positive & negative) Usability testing Testing with students

Next Steps?

Extend functionality (messaging, more bling, more cases, more mini-challenges, player interaction and collaboration, etc.)

Make content extendable (e.g. for teaching Information Literacy)

Integrate into curriculum Release to general public under open source

license Tighten security Tic Tac Toe game (games within the game)

Funding

This project was generously funded by a National Leadership Grant (#LG06-05-0150-05) for Research & Demonstration from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Questions?

JMU faculty, staff and students may go to http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu to create a user account and begin playing immediately

Non-JMU people may create a user account but must wait for account to be validated by game administrators