technology
You trialled the game with Suncare Community Services, a
provider operating out of Queensland. How did those early
users respond to the game? What feedback did you receive in
terms of its application and knowledge-building qualities?
The response was overwhelmingly positive, which was great
affirmation of the strength of the program. They made comments
like, ‘It’s a good simulation’, ‘The graphics are realistic’, ‘It’s more
realistic than going through a multi-choice quiz’. The thing is that
you start having a lot of fun with it, and you start to think that,
while it’s a game, it is of real value.
You said serious games are a big part of the future of health
education and USC’s nursing team is already working on the
development of several new training games. Why is this type
of technology a good fit for health education? What are the
benefits of this type of delivery?
It’s accessible. In the technological age, we’re now at a stage
where we have got resources, we’ve got programs, we’ve got
software, we’ve got a number of other capabilities through which
we can engage learners that we didn’t have before. We also need
to think about the demographic and population we’re educating.
Many of the people we’ve got coming through our programs are
native digital learners. It tends to suit the way in which they’ve
been brought up with the technology.
This type of technology puts people in a real-world context,
quite complex scenarios that relate to client profiles reflecting
a range of conditions where support is required for people
experiencing difficulties with perception, co-ordination and
movement. Because the game engages people at such a high
level, and because of the competitive nature that spawns from that
– the fact that people are going in time and time again to increase
their score – not only are they going to be able to engage and
learn and apply concepts, but also [we hope] they will translate
those into practice.
If a player goes back into the game and attempts to rectify a
mistake they have made, what they will find is that it is highly
unlikely they will be given that opportunity. There are more than
100 different hazards that are spawned differently according to
the different profiles for clients that are presented. For example,
if you had a class of people or a group of people within an
industry, who were doing this game as part of mandatory
professional development, and as a player, I said to a colleague,
‘When you go into the kitchen of the two-storey house,
remember to check that toaster, because it’s faulty’, when the
next person went in there, or if I went back in there, myself, to
try to correct it and get a higher score, that toaster may not be
there or [it may not] be faulty.
The whole thing with this learning style is making people think.
It’s encouraging critical thinking, the development of clinical
reasoning. It’s about applying knowledge. It’s not about rote
learning. That’s one of the strong, positive things about using
technology like this. ■
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