Immune Attack: Learning Science & Games
Information technologies have transformed the way we bank, fight wars, shop and communicate, but this potential has not yet been realized in the way we teach and learn. Computer simulations are often used to convey difficult concepts or to create environments that are either too difficult or too expensive to replicate in the physical world. One immediate challenge is to accumulate evidence that games are more efficient and effective than traditional methods at teaching some classroom subjects while increasing the user’s interest. The Federation of American Scientists developed the educational video game Immune Attack (IA) to research how gameplay can be used to communicate complex concepts in a compelling and effective way.
Immune Attack introduces basic concepts of human immunology to high school and entry-level college students. Designed to give depth and enhance textbook lessons, IA aims to excite students about the subject, while illuminating both general principles and detailed concepts of immunology. This serious game is both a simulation and a mechanism for rewarding the user’s interest and achievement.
Immune Attack tackles complex subject matter in a realistic 3D environment while aligning learning objectives to standards of learning. By design, the gameplay limits the cellular interactions to those that could feasibly occur in the human body. This specification emphasizes IA’s scientific accuracy and pedagogical authority. Painstaking attention to detail ensured that the simulation would accurately reflect real-world biology while maintaining the motivation intrinsic to games.
Through focus group feedback and formal evaluations, the FAS team broke ground with innovative solutions to unique challenges. While developing IA, one early challenge was to balance the immunologists’ desire to present an accurate scale of objects in the game environment to enable authentic discovery-based learning. The first release of IA incorporated a three-dimensional (3D) game environment depicting the blood-stream and presented learning challenges in two-dimensional (2D) mini-games. The player needed to win these smaller challenges to master the immunological concepts necessary to succeed with the greater mission objective. While the 2D approach accurately depicted the concept, it created a visual disconnect between the 3D immersive environment and the 2D challenge. The user was forced to shift gears during play from experiential learning in an engrossing 3D discovery-based environment to a 2D symbolic representation. [See image 1]
The game was then ported to a new engine that provided an opportunity to solve technical problems and to redevelop the mini-games as 3D models. The first learning challenge focused on the process of transmigration, when leukocytes adhere to the endotheliallining of the blood vessel wall and migrate through the wall towards the site of infection. During the first design change, the previously 2D symbolic game was modeled accurately to scale in the immersive environment. Ligands were more than one thousand times smaller than the white blood cells they sat on. The mini-game depicted the scale of the macromolecules while also clearly presenting the overarching concept of transmigration. The redesign enhanced visualization of key concepts by virtually placing the user between a moving monocyte and the vessel wall. Through this redesign the user was now able to fully interact with 3D realistic biological entities. [See image 2]
In the latest iteration of IA, users race through the flowing bloodstream and mark the correct ligands before the monocyte passes them by. The environment was dramatically increased so the player could view both the ligands and leukocytes at full scale when in the proper perspective (up-close for the small ligands and far away to see the entire cell). The user is also equipped with a limited amount of speed bursts to be strategically used by the player to finish the game in less time. User feedback inspired the changes to IA that now place the user in the driver’s seat of complex biological processes to fight infections. [See image 3]
FAS has applied a process of repeated evaluations with students and experts that has resulted in a cycle of continuous improvement. Feedback is analyzed to determine how best to translate recommendations into functional design specifications. Past evaluations have included Advance Placement biology students and teachers. Each was asked to complete pre- and post-tests that consisted of 14 questions to assess the user’s interest level, difficulty with the subject matter, relevance, and attitude. The test also contained questions to measure knowledge of specific concepts addressed through gameplay. Preliminary evaluation results displayed a gain in knowledge after playing the game that could not be otherwise accounted for by school, gender, class, or gaming experience.
Exploratory research in conjunction with teachers’ and students’ verbal feedback has improved the design and development of IA. Design tweaks based on user data have improved IA and FAS will begin the next round of evaluation in spring 2008. More than one hundred high school teachers and entry-level college professors plan to test and implement IA in their curriculum. By increasing the sample size and refining the evaluation metrics, Immune Attack will continue to further our understanding of the impact of games on learning.
FAS
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