1. FACE THE CASE A Health Literacy Game

2. 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

4. Overview – Screenshots The game takes place in a world based on the JMU community. Players receive cases on the PDA.

5. Overview – Screenshots Players answer questions to get points. Once they have enough points they can buy skills.

6. Overview – Game Play Sequence Buy Bling Communications Market Collaboration Cafe Info Emporium Culture Bazaar Review Case Study Login Face the Case

7. Play the Game  http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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?

11. 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

12. Technologies Internet Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0 SQL Server Express Browser with Flash plug-in SOAP (web services).NET C#, SQL

13. Technologies – Database

14. Technologies – Screenshot

15. 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

16. Resources & Timeline  Budget: $75,000 to $100,000  Timeline: One to two years  People: many…

17. Lessons Learned  Browser issues (technology issues)  Student comments (positive & negative)  Usability testing  Testing with students

18. 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)

19. 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.

20. Questions?  JMU faculty, staff and students may go to http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu to create a user account and begin playing immediately http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu  Non-JMU people may create a user account but must wait for account to be validated by game administrators