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meaningful play 2008 travel

Poster Information

TitleTeaching Cultural Awareness with Serious Games
Presenter(s)Monica Evans and Marge Zielke
SessionConference Reception, Game Exhibition, and Poster Session
TimeThursday, October 9, 6:00p-8:00p
LocationEast Lansing Technology Innovation Center
FormatPoster Presentation
DescriptionOne of the greatest challenges facing the citizens of the 21st century is an understanding of, and acclimation to, foreign cultures. In business, radically different customers and corporations must negotiate, transact, and sustain relationships from halfway around the globe. In medicine, nurses are faced with patients that won't admit to ailments in the presence of certain family members. In the military, soldiers put their lives on the line daily without understanding the civilian populations they are trying to protect. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said, "too many mistakes have been made over the years because our government and military did not understand - or even seek to understand - the countries or cultures we were dealing with."

Cultural understanding often comes best from total immersion within that culture - so what better way to teach cultural awareness than with immersive games? Using the structure of serious games and the technology behind the most successful commercial games, training simulations can be built that not only model the cognitive complexity and nuance of culture, but interactively assist trainees with decision-making strategies and habits that can save both dollars and lives in the field. Gaming structures also present the opportunity for experimentation and risk-taking in safe environments, and for students to fully experience the difficult or tragic ramifications of a single minor action.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, we have developed the 3-D ADAT Model (Asymmetric Domain Analysis and Training) for teaching soldiers the specifics of cultural awareness in rural and urban segments of Afghanistan, a model that can easily be adapted to other cultures and other fields. It is our belief that cultural awareness can be effectively and efficiently taught in immersive, virtual environments, and that this sort of teaching will only become more useful and prevalent as cultures and societies continue to interact on the global scale.

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