This week we had to invent a serious university micro-game for health or corporate training, playable in 30 seconds to 5 minutes (max.). Our target audience should be some specific group at MSU, a specific subset of students, faculty, maintenance workers, administrators, parents of freshmen, etc. Here is my response:
Serve well!
Human resource in the University campus for various food outlets are students who work part time . These students are actually too busy in their own academic schedules and being part time they do not have much commitment to the work. They work to earn their monthly expenses, which is critical to their survival. Presently the training given to these workers are in the form of videos that they have to watch (which they generally sleep through). My game will allow these part time workers to learn the tricks of the trade by playing an interactive digital game.
Audience: Part time restaurant worker in Food Court (International Center) namely, Subway, Villa Pizza, Panda Express.
Serious Goals: Teach Food workers to serve clients at respective stores during peak Lunch Hours.
Gameplay: It is a web based flash game. Actions are restricted to point and click, drag and drop. Your goal is to earn maximum satisfaction points. You begin by creating your avatar. This is your first day at work. It is Lunchtime and there is a huge queue outside the shop. Time is very critical. No Client wants to wait for more than 2- 3 minutes. Your job is to prepare the lunch for the client within the stipulated time with best satisfaction scores. You have to listen the order carefully. Whether it is a meal to-go or if they want to eat it there. Once you get the order , carefully prepare the Lunch as per the specification. While doing so your hands needs to be clean and gloves need to be proper. You lose points whenever there is a hygiene violation. While preparing food, you need to make sure that you replenish the different items as and when they are over. If the client has to wait an extra minute for your callousness of refilling, you will lose points and the satisfaction score given by the client will be less. You also have to take care of the garbage bin that fills up during the process otherwise there will be flies and cockroaches in the shop. This will heavily mar your score. You have to make sure that you maintain hygiene standards while you shift between your tasks in hand. If you touch the food after you have handled trash, you lose points. You must make sure that your hands are washed before you touch food items. All these tasks are to be done without making the customer wait. Once you deliver the order, you will get marks based on the satisfaction scores that the customer gives and hygiene blunders that you might have committed in the process.
Theories: Simulation and situated learning is the main backbone of the game. Fish tank and sandbox is incorporated in the game. The number of parameters that the worker has to deal with in this game are far less. No adverse consequences for making mistakes. You just lose points, but in real life you might lose a job. Repeated action helps in cognitive processing of the information.
Assessment: The effectiveness can be measured once the worker is in the real life situation. An experiment can be conducted where a participatory group is assessed against a control group. We can measure the effectiveness of workers who played this game verses workers who went through video tutorials. Results would help us know if the game was effective.
