Schell Games, in partnership with WestEd, proposes to create a mobile adventure game entitled Only One Day in which middle-school players are able to experience the excitement of one day in an emergency department (ED) from the perspective of various ED roles (physicians, nurses, therapists, etc). Players will experience the same day multiple times across sessions, moving between physician and staff positions, completing associated medical tasks, and making decisions about patient care and physician and staff interactions and collaborations. To have a successful day and complete the game, players must use engineering design skills (as defined by the Next Generation Science Standards) to define problems (for both patients and staff), develop and test models of behavior, interpret evidence gained from these models, and use that evidence to inform their problem solving. Because players must experience the same day in multiple iterations, they must use information obtained during previous iterations of that day to inform how to effectively and efficiently solve problems with patients and staff. This game is designed to take place within 5, 20-min sessions. Each session will represent one day in the emergency room. By the final session, players should have developed enough knowledge about both their medical decisions for their patients and their between-character interactions to play the ideal day and, thus, beat the game. The project goals are to (1) develop and improve middle-school students' engineering design skills through gameplay, (2) familiarize students with ED professions, including required medical knowledge and steps to achieve this career goal, and (3) change the perception of racial and ethnic diversity within ED roles. WestEd will conduct usability and feasibility testing with students, teachers, and content experts to ensure that the Phase I product is the best possible one and provide useful information for development of future Phase II product plans.
Public Health Relevance Statement: Public Health Relevance: In this project, middle-school students will further develop and refine their engineering design skills (as outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards) within the context of a mobile game set in the context of an emergency department. The emergency department represents an important setting given recent increases in emergency-department patient visits and projected decreases in numbers of employed physicians. Through this game, students will (a) define and solve patient and staff problems by interpreting evidence gained through iterative gameplay and (b) learn roles, responsibilities, and requirements of emergency department physicians and staff.
Project Terms: Accident and Emergency department; Association of American Medical Colleges; Behavior; career; Collaborations; commercial application; Consult; Decision Making; design; Development; Diagnosis; Education; Educational process of instructing; Emergency Department patient; Emergency Department Physician; Emergency Medicine; empowered; engineering design; Ensure; Ethnicity aspects; experience; Funding; Future; Goals; Grant; handheld mobile device; Home environment; improved; Individual; innovation; interest; junior high school; Knowledge; Lead; Learning; Marketing; Medical; Medical emergency; Medicine; meetings; Middle School Student; Modeling; Next Generation Science Standards; Nurses; Operating System; Outcome; Patient Care; Patients; Perception; Phase; Physician's Role; Physicians; Play; Positioning Attribute; Problem Solving; public health relevance; racial and ethnic; Recording of previous events; Research; research and development; Role; role model; School-Age Population; Schools; Series; skills; Solutions; STEM career; Students; success; teacher; Testing; Time; tool; Underrepresented Minority; usability; Vision; Visit
