IDIG Lunch & Learn: Serious Games and Behavior Modification

On Tuesday, September 24, IDIG had its monthly Lunch and Learn Collaborate session. This month, Emily Ligon hosted a highly interactive session titled “Serious Games and Behavior Modification: What does it mean for education?” The presentation started with a brief video demonstrating the iOS running game, “Zombies, Run 2,” with an explanation of how the game inspired the presentation. From there, participants selected a topic area that matched their interests. Emily briefly explained that topic area, and then the participants split into groups to discuss their own experiences in that area before coming back together as a group and sharing what they learned. Participants repeated this process before the session wrapped up with a look at some of the games and resources we have at NC State.

The first polling results led to a brief explanation of how serious games are being used for education and training, with specific examples from healthcare (professionals and patients), the military and teacher education. After this brief discussion, participants were placed in groups where they shared examples of their personal use of games in education or examples they had seen. The group then chose to learn about considerations when choosing to gamify a course or lesson and the implementation issues that might arise. We discussed the importance of knowing the purpose, audience and environment for the game while also taking into consideration the pros and cons of using games. After small group discussion and sharing back to the larger group, Dr. Tiffany Barnes from Computer Science shared some information about the work she and her colleagues are doing both at NC State and at UNC-Charlotte. Following that, Amanda Robertson and David Tredwell shared some examples of gamification that DELTA has been working on.