Journal Entry 3

Unfortunately, I have been working in the development of my game yet. However, I have reading about games and simulations, trying to understand and implementing them for this project. Also, I have defined my project a little bit better as you can see below:

Justification:

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by high blood glucose in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, depending on the type of diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2008). It is common to notice that, in general, patients diagnosed with diabetes have difficulty to follow diets because they do not know how to read the nutrition label or they are not sure about the portion size that they are supposed to have while preparing their meal. Regarding this fact, it would be relevant to develop a gaming simulation to help not only diabetics but people in general to understand how to prepare a meal in those circumstances.

For this research, an educational game (prototype version) will be designed and developed to assist players to prepare a meal considering the following: nutrition label (carbohydrates, glucose and calories) and portion size. Once the game has been developed, alpha and beta test will be conducted to verify the impact of the game and possible attitudinal changes in the player’s life.

Purpose:

The purpose of this project is to design and build an educational digital game (prototype version) to teach diabetics and people in general how to prepare a healthy meal. Moreover, this game will be evaluated to verify its impact and possible attitudinal changes in a person’s life.

Questions:

1. How can an educational game affect learners’ behavior in real-life?

2. What kind of reactions do people have playing the game?

Educational game design and development

First, the game will provide players with a brief explanation of the activity and their tasks. Also, before playing the game, it will be suggest to players that they will go through a tutorial to learn more about topics such as: overview of diabetes, carbohydrates, nutrition label and portion size of foods. (In this case, I am not sure if I will be able to develop the game and the tutorial on time to showcase, therefore, I will be compromising in have a prototype version of the game for showcase).

Once on the game, players will see a shelf with different types of food as it is shown in the screen below:

Figure 1. A screenshot of the beginning of the game.

When players click on one of the desired food, a pop-window will open up. In this new window, they will have access to a summarized nutrition label (carbohydrates, glucose and calories). Players will also be able to choose the portion size of the chosen food ( ¼ cup, ½ cup, etc.). After they have added all the food for the meal, the game will offer feedback information regarding the amount of carbohydrates, glucose and calories on their meal.

Reference:

American Diabetes Association. 2008.

Journal Entry 2

This last Sunday, I had a meeting with my client and we discussed the content of the instructional product that we’ll be developing. She explained to me the important topics that we should discussed and also she provided me with basic information about the content.

Currently, I have been struggling with the content and how I can develop a game out of it. Another thing that concerns me is the fact that I am not a good programmer and this might be the skill that I will need most for this project.

On the topic of game, I have researched articles and also looked for sample of non-entertainment games. I have found a lot of articles discussing simulations and virtual-worlds, but few of them approach the development of non-entertainment games (serious games).

Besides the fact that those games have real-life content, it is important to notice that once playing a game, the player enters on a different atmosphere, which means that to be part of the game, the player must follow a set of complex rules. In addition, the context on these games are important for the learners, since they need to understand the process that is going on.

For example, a recent exploratory study has been conducted to investigate the implications and impact of individualized and reflective guidance in an educational Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) (Nelson, 2007). In this study, a MUVE based on hypothesis formation and experimental design in science, called ‘River City’, was implemented with a sample of middle school students in order to verify the effects of its guidance system in the learning outcomes and also the differences in guidance use among male and female participants. River City (MUVE) provided a simulated environment for students who would explore the virtual city in order to find the cause for people’s illness.

One interesting fact of this research is that the 3D environment and simulation aspect captivated the learners. My intention developing this game is to have the students captivated by the context and the meaning of it. So far, it seems difficult to accomplish this task, but I’ll keep working and researching more about.

My plans for next week is to have my ideas and my game more outlined, as well as the content for this project. I feel that I’m a little behind on this, especially on the content. However, I hope that I can have more substantial information by next week.

Reference

Nelson, B. (2007). Exploring the use of individualized, reflective guidance in an educational multi-user virtual environment. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 16(1), 83-97.

Journal Entry 1

Until now, it had been really hard to conceptualize and visualize my project. From the moment that I enrolled for this until now, I had several ideas for my project, but none of them really got me. Some of my ideas were: to develop a 3D animation with Maya, create a stop-motion animation in Flash and design games for kids. I really want to develop an educational game not only for the challenge, but because I know, from a teacher and student’s perspective, how games help us to understand and explore the content to be studied in a very unique manner. Thus, I decided that I would develop a game for my 6190 project; however I still needed to know its content and subject. Also, I didn’t know very well how I would approach this game and which tool should I use.

One day, in an informal conversation with my roommate, we discussed about developing a game about diabetes. First, she explained me how important it would be to design and develop a game like this. She gave me an overall idea of the content and how I could approach. After that, I started to organize the information that she gave me and to imagine how I could create a game from that. I searched through the internet to see what kind of games have been developing in this area and it seems to me that are few and most of them are still in development phase. Even though, I knew what I was going to do (game) and the subject (diabetes), something was missing.

Therefore, I looked through books, visited some websites and talked with some co-workers and even got diabetes’ board game to understand how I could develop an online game from it. But today, discussing my idea with other peers I got confident about what I will do:

1) I will develop a non-entertainment digital game with its subject in diabetes. The game will focus on the educational aspect instead of the entertainment and fun part.

2) The game will be an instrument to inform and teach about diabetes to society in general.

3) The subject of the game will be type 2 of diabetes, which is prevalent among overweight/obese individuals, the elderly, and people with a genetic disposition for type 2 diabetes.

Although I have some goals and objectives to accomplish, there are still a lot of things that I need to work on. One of them is the feasibility of this product. I’m still not sure if I will be able to develop it. Thus, my goals for next week are:

· to have a flowchart of the game;

· to search tutorials and information on games;

· to discuss the content and its approach with my client;

I really hope that I can make this happen. We’ll see :)!!