Serious Games on the Lived Experience of Dementia as Learning Tools in Pharmacy Education

Dementia is a stigmatized and often ‘invisible’ condition which requires clinicians to have a nuanced understanding of the lived experience to build trust and provide better quality of care. Pharmacists are at the frontline of care for patients who may have dementia and there is a need for effective and engaging learning opportunities to prepare them for caring for patients living with dementia. Serious games have gained popularity for their potential in facilitating safe and engaging learning opportunities. However, there are limited applications of serious games in clinical education on the topic of dementia and little transparency on the development process. The thesis work outlined in this project intends to explore how serious games can best facilitate a learning experience for senior pharmacy students to better their understanding of the lived experience of dementia. The primary objective was to develop a serious game with multi-stakeholder input. The secondary objective was to provide game design recommendations for development of serious games on this topic based on end-user play-testing experiences. During both the development and user-testing, qualitative methods were used to gather thorough feedback and understand individual play experiences, namely semi-structured interviews and the think-aloud protocol. To develop a serious game, the game design framework for medical education was adapted in this project, which involved three stages: preparation and design, development, and formative evaluation. In the first stage, a clinician and a systems design expert were consulted to develop the first prototype. In the development stage, the prototype was reviewed by stakeholders including clinicians, people with lived experiences of dementia or care partners, and serious game researchers through semi-structured interviews, resulting in iterative improvements. Stakeholder feedback culminated in the development of a serious game with the goal of helping pharmacy students better understand the lived experience of dementia, in a digital, non-linear story format. During the final formative evaluation stage of game design, 11 senior pharmacy students, a pharmacy educator, and a social worker with expertise in dementia care tested the game. Their learning and play experiences were gauged through the semi-structured interview and think-aloud protocols. The qualitative data was analyzed using the framework method of analysis. Three factors were necessary for creating an engaging learning experience about dementia for senior pharmacy students. The first was facilitating understanding of dementia through an experiential approach using a realistic environment and authentic storytelling. The second was providing a problem-oriented experience by providing meaningful player interaction opportunities and creative freedom. Finally, novelty in the game format was necessary for an engaging experience. Future directions include recruiting more stakeholders and student participants with experiences relating to dementia, and utilizing these recommendations to improve on the game and assessing its impact on student empathy and confidence in caring for patients who have dementia

Do we need permission to play in public? The design of participation for social play video games at play parties and ‘alternative’ games festivals

Play is a fundamental to being Human. It helps to make sense of the self, to learn, to be creative and to relax. The advent of video games challenged traditional notions of play, introducing a single player experience to what had primarily been a communal social activity. As technology has developed, communal play has found both online and real-world spaces within video games. Online streaming, multiplayer games and built-in spectator modes within games underpin online communal play experiences, whilst ‘alternative’ games festivals, play parties and electronic sports, provide real world spaces for people to meet, play and exchange knowledge relating to both playing and making video games. This article reports the study of social play events which bring people together in the same space to explore video games making and playing. Expert interviews with curators, and event facilitators provides qualitative data from which design processes are formalised into a ‘model of participation’ of social play. Four key areas of balance are proposed as core considerations in supporting participation in event design. The study of these events also suggests that their design and fostering of participation has the potential to evoke cultural change in game making and playing practices

Evaluation Report of Prospero’s Island: an Immersive Approach to Literacy at Key Stage 3.

Prospero's Island is an immersive theatre project created by Punchdrunk Enrichment and sponsored by Learning Partner, London Borough of Hackney (Hackney Learning Trust). The project sought to inspire and motivate students’ engagement with the English curriculum, and to develop an immersive approach to teaching literacy that would improve students’ learning. Prospero’s Island took place in a secondary academy in Hackney, London over two school terms (autumn 2014-spring 2015). The project was embedded in existing schemes of work, and included the following elements: • An immersive theatre installation for Year 7-8 students (aged 11-13 years); this took the form of an interactive game based on The Tempest; over a two-week period groups of students participated in this experience for a morning or afternoon (autumn term); • A Teaching and Learning Day (TALD) and eight twilight CPD sessions on immersive learning techniques for school staff and teachers across London (autumn term); • A return to the installation for one lesson, led by English teachers (autumn term); • Follow-on work by teachers to develop immersive learning in English lessons (spring term); • An independent evaluation of the project (autumn and spring terms)

Teachers as designers of GBL scenarios: Fostering creativity in the educational settings

This paper presents a research started in 2010 with the aim of fostering the creativity of teachers through the design of Game-Based Learning scenarios. The research has been carried out involving teachers and trainers in the co-design and implementation of digital games as educational resources. Based on the results grained from the research, this paper highlights successful factors of GBL, as well as constraints and boundaries that the introduction of innovative teaching and learning practices faces within educational settings

Videogames in the museum:participation, possibility and play in curating meaningful visitor experiences

In 2014 Videogames in the Museum [1] engaged with creative practitioners, games designers, curators and museums professionals to debate and explore the challenges of collecting and exhibiting videogames and games design. Discussions around authorship in games and games development, the transformative effect of the gallery on the cultural reception and significance of videogames led to the exploration of participatory modes and playful experiences that might more effectively expose the designer’s intent and enhance the nature of our experience as visitors and players. In proposing a participatory mode for the exhibition of videogames this article suggests an approach to exhibition and event design that attempts to resolve tensions between traditions of passive consumption of curated collections and active participation in meaning making using theoretical models from games analysis and criticism and the conceit of game and museum spaces as analogous rules based environments

Project:Filter - using applied games to engage secondary schoolchildren with public policy

Applied games present a twenty-first-century method of consuming information for a specific purpose beyond pure entertainment. Objectives such as awareness and engagement are often used as intended outcomes of applied games in alignment with strategic, organizational, or commercial purposes. Applied games were highlighted as an engagement-based outcome to explore noPILLS, a pan-European policy research project which presented policy pointers and suggested methods of interventions for reducing micropollution within the wastewater treatment process. This paper provides an assessment of a video game which was developed for the purpose of public engagement with policy-based research. The video game, Project:Filter, was developed as a means of communicating noPILLS to secondary school children in Scotland as part of a classroom-based activity. Knowledge development and engagement were identified using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to evidence topical awareness, depth of understanding, and suggested methods of intervention. Analysis of observations also provided insights into challenges surrounding logistics, pedagogy, social interactions, learning, and gender as contributing factors to the schoolchildren’s experiences of Project:Filter. The intention of this paper is two-fold: firstly, to provide an example of developing video games from policy-based research; and secondly, to suggest methods of phenomenological assessment for identifying play-based engagement