The GeoEduc3d project designed a networked game to educate students about geomatics, game design, climate change, and computer science. The early prototype of the game – Energy Wars – and the later prototype – Energy Wars Mobile – both relied heavily on student – faculty networking, critiques from professionals from outside of our research network, and intense workshop-based design sessions.
Research networks foster creativity and break down institutional barriers, but introduce geographic barriers to communication and collaboration. In designing mobile educational games, our distributed team took advantage of diverse talent pools and differing perspectives to drive forward a core vision of our design targets. Our strategies included intense design workshops, use of online meeting rooms, group paper and software prototyping, and dissemination of prototypes to other teams for refinement and repurposing. Our final deliverable, a mobile educational game and a series of parallel technology demonstrations, reflect the mix of influences and the focus on iterated development that our network maintained.
Rob Harrap, Sylvie Daniel, Michael Power, Joshua Pearce, Nicholas Hedley, “Design and Implementation of Mobile Educational Games: Networks and Innovation”, in Nicholas Chrisman and Monica Wachowicz (Eds). The Added Value of Scientific Networking: Perspectives from the GEOIDE Network Members 1998-2012, GEOIDE Network. Quebec, Canada. Chapter 8, pp. 157-187 (2012).