FACE THE CASE
A Health Literacy Game
Overview
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Face the Case is a quest to acquire the skills in
order to solve a variety of health and human
services cases in a role-playing environment that is
engaging, challenging and visually interesting
Case descriptions are delivered through the PDA,
which also keeps track of the skills, skill points and
collaborators for each player
Intended audience is undergraduate nursing, health
science, and social work students
Overview – Screenshots
The game takes place in a world based on the
JMU community.
Players receive cases on the PDA.
Overview – Screenshots
Players answer questions to get points. Once
they have enough points they can buy skills.
Overview – Game Play Sequence
Info
Emporium
Buy Bling
Culture
Bazaar
Login
Review
Case Study
Communications
Market
Collaboration
Cafe
Face the
Case
Play the Game
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http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu
Background
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What is a game?
Levels
 Open-ended quest
 New skills/powers
 Rewards
 Ability to fail and try again
 High scores
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What is fun?
Sensual
 Surprising
 Challenging
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Audience
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1,200 undergraduate allied health students (e.g.
future nurses and social workers)
Game is aimed at a population of preprofessionals whose course of study is preparing
them for careers in which they will interact with a
diverse population of patients/clients who have
complex and diverse health and human services
needs
Pedagogy
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What is health literacy?
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What kinds of skills are needed to achieve health literacy?
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Health Literacy: The degree to which individuals have the
capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health
information and services needed to make appropriate health
decisions.
Information seeking
Communication
Cultural competence
How can these skills be developed in a game?
Technologies
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Graphical game interface and avatar creation app are
Adobe Flash objects (SWFs) running in a web browser
User profiles and history, skill sets and inventories, cases
and case histories, etc. are stored in a SQL Server
2005 Express database
Flash client and database communicate via ASP .NET
Web Services (SOAP)
An ASP .NET web application is used to self-create
player profiles, to host Flash content, and to manage
database content
Technologies
Browser with
Flash plug-in
SQL Server Express
Internet
.NET C#, SQL
Windows 2003
server with IIS 6.0
Browser with
Flash plug-in
Browser with
Flash plug-in
Technologies – Database
Technologies – Screenshot
Project Team
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Jennifer McCabe (JMU): Game designer, project
manager, subject matter specialist, content creator
Kevin Hegg (JMU): Game designer, programmer,
database developer
Venture Interactive, LLC: Flash programming,
animation, graphic illustration
CIT: Graphic design support, instructional
technologists
JMU nursing students: Game testers
Resources & Timeline
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Budget: $75,000 to $100,000
Timeline: One to two years
People: many…
Lessons Learned
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Browser issues (technology issues)
Student comments (positive & negative)
Usability testing
Testing with students
Next Steps?
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Extend functionality (messaging, more bling, more
cases, more mini-challenges, player interaction and
collaboration, etc.)
Make content extendable (e.g. for teaching
Information Literacy)
Integrate into curriculum
Release to general public under open source license
Tighten security
Tic Tac Toe game (games within the game)
Funding
This project was generously funded by a National
Leadership Grant (#LG06-05-0150-05) for
Research & Demonstration from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services.
Questions?
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JMU faculty, staff and students may go to
http://ftc.cit.jmu.edu to create a user account and
begin playing immediately
Non-JMU people may create a user account but
must wait for account to be validated by game
administrators