IMD Forum for 9/2/09: RESEARCH in IMD
Speakers: IMD Faculty and Students
Time: Wednesday, September 2, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
This week's seminar will feature short presentations by IMD faculty and students about current research projects.
6:00 Scott Fisher
Research in IMD
6:15 Sean Plott and Daniel Ponce
CATS Math Games
The CATS project combines research on cognitive psychology, instruction, assessment, and games to improve the learning of underperforming middle school students. The first prototype, created and tested with students this summer, teaches addition of rational numbers.
6:25 Nahil Sharkasi
Participation Nation
Participation Nation is a game for teaching American constitutional history and civics to high school students. Players can play the “Forces of Change” or the “Status Quo” in a debate over the constitutional issues that shaped the country.
6:35 Logan Olson & Diane Tucker
Intergenerational Play research
The Intergenerational Play project is a collaboration between the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the University of Michigan School of Learning Sciences, and the GIL. The goal of the project is to discover design principles for creating engaging and intergenerational games that can promote literacy and learning.
6:45 Elizabeth Swensen & Jesse Vigil
Pathfinder
The Pathfinder project is a collaboration between the GIL and USC's Center for Higher Education Policy and Analysis. Funded by a Provost's grant, the goal of the project is to design a game to engage high school students in the college preparation and application process.
6:55 Tracy Fullerton, Todd Furmanski & Bryan Jaycox
Walden
Walden simulates the experiment in living made by Thoreau at Walden Pond in 1845-47, allowing players to walk in his virtual footsteps, attend to the tasks of living a self-reliant existence, discover in the beauty of a virtual landscape the ideas and writings of this unique philosopher, and cultivate through the gameplay their own thoughts and responses to the concepts discovered there.
7:10 Peter Brinson & Kurosh Valanejad
Cat and the Coup
The Cat and the Coup is an experimental documentary game in which you play the cat of Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran. On the night of August 19, 1953, a CIA-engineered coup replaces the Prime Minister, with an absolute dictatorship. As a player, you coax Mossadegh through significant events of his life by knocking objects off of shelves, scattering papers, jumping into laps, and scratching heads.
7:20 Perry Hoberman
MEPEDS
The Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study (MEPEDS) is a project of the USC Department of Ophthalmology at the Doheny Eye Institute. For a pilot study, a team at IMD is developing stereoscopic 3D print, animation and interactive materials to facilitate recruitment efforts and enhance the waiting room experience.
7:30 Scott Fisher
Million Story Building Project
The Mobile and Environmental Media Lab is currently exploring location-specific mobile storytelling with a project called The Million Story Building (MSB). This research investigates the idea of ambient storytelling and how the built environment can act as a storytelling entity that engages and interacts with the people in specific spaces. Through the use of the downloadable MSB mobile phone-based application,sensor networks, and other software applications, inhabitants and visitors become immersed in an emergent, responsive environment of collaborative storytelling.
7:40 Logan Olson and Emily Duff
New research at ICT/IMD
7:50 Marientina Gotsis
Wellness Partners
This game employs known effective game mechanics from casual games and features from online social networking in order to enable players to leverage their social network to meet individual and/or group wellness goals. This study aims to advance theory and practice through the evaluation of the following key methods, measures, and outcomes.
8:00 Erin Reynolds
Humana Games
A presentation of three mobile sensor-based health game prototypes for nutrition, exercise and immunity sponsored for Humana (Trainer, Healthy Eats, and Germ Wars).