Using serious games and virtual worlds to enrich social interactions and create new spaces
Date: Wednesday 21 Jan 2009
Time: 18:30 – Tea was 6:00pm for 6:30 start; thanks to Anne James for setting it all up.
Speaker: Sara de Freitas – Serious Games Institute www.seriousgames.org.uk
Location: AS124, Coventry University
Abstract:
The presentation explored how living, learning and working are changing in the face of new technologies allowing for more immersive experiences. The impact of games and virtual worlds is only beginning to be touched upon with new applications from health, education to business training emerging. However questions remain as to how different the twenty-first century will become in the face of new spaces emerging for undertaking all kinds of human interactions. Sara stepped into the world of the immersive and the social and envisaged how far these new forms may transform our everyday lives.
Dr Sara de Freitas outlined that she is Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry where she leads an applied research team working closely with industry. The Institute is the first of its kind in the UK and it is envisaged that it will play a leading role in future developments of game-based learning. Formerly Sara worked as Lab Manager, Project Manager on development programmes and Senior Research Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab. The Lab is a collaborative venture between Birkbeck College and the Institute of Education, University of London focusing upon technology assisted learning. Sara continues to hold a visiting senior research fellowship at the Lab. Sara is also working with TruSim (Blitz Games), the Vega Group PLC and the University of Birmingham on a 2 million pound UK Technology Strategy Board part-funded Serious Games research and development project which is developing highly immersive learning games demonstrators to solve business training needs.
A cracking presentation, with many video clips, including a demo of Triage Trainer and a comparison of results using this compared to table-top training.