A Serious Game for Incidence Response Education and Training

• Published in: International journal of technology, knowledge and society Vol. 8; no. 4; pp. 177 - 184
• Main Authors: Tawadrous, Mina, Kevan, Sherrene D, Kapralos, Bill, Hogue, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Assault; Choices; College Students; Experiments; Hospitals; Learning; Threat; Training; Workplaces
• ISSN: 1832-3669

A critical incident at any institution may include bomb threats, assault, bio-hazardous spills, civil disobedience, electrical outage, fire or explosion, gas leak, natural disasters, infectious diseases, and terrorist threats. Although many employees know of this type of situation, most are not properly trained with respect to how to react when a critical incident occurs, nor do they understand lockdown procedures. Serious games refer to video games that are used for training, advertising, simulation, or education and inherently support experiential learning by providing students with concrete experiences and active experimentation allowing users to experience situations that are difficult (even impossible) to achieve in reality due to a number of factors including cost, time, and safety concerns. Here we describe the development of an interactive, multi-player (3D) serious game for the purpose of incidence response procedure education and training. Users are placed (via an avatar) within the three-dimension rendering of their workplace environment (e.g., university, college, hospital) in a first-person perspective. Within the virtual world, users encounter a particular emergency incidence (a specific 'scenario') that requires their response. They carry out their required tasks which will involve making various choices; making the correct choice will allow them to proceed with the scenario whereas an incorrect choice will present the user with information indicating why their choice was incorrect etc. The goal is to handle the emergency situation appropriately. Within the scope of this paper, a toxic fire scenario is being developed where the task of the user/player is to extinguish a fire in a typical chemical laboratory through the proper use of a fire extinguisher (available within the laboratory) and more specifically, using the Pull, Aim, Squeeze and Sweep (or P. A. S. S.) method. Adapted from the source document.