July 22nd to 24th, 2009
Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, Yorkshire, UK

Formed in 1970, SAGSET is a voluntary professional society dedicated to improving the effectiveness and quality of learning through the use of interactive learning, role-play, simulation and gaming – in all aspects of education and training, from Primary School to University – and in all levels of adult, lifelong learning from the shop floor to the board room. The Coaching and Learning Through Games ’09 Confererence promises to be an interesting event for all those interested in serious games.

Conor Linehan will be presenting a paper entitled “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Emergency Management Team:’ Designing and evaluating a serious game for training emergency managers in group decision making skills” on Thursday July 23, 2009.

ABSTRACT – Serious games are games that are designed to educate rather than entertain. The game outlined and evaluated here was commissioned and designed as a tool to improve the group decision making skills of people who manage real-world emergencies such as floods, fires, volcanoes and chemical spills. The game design exploits research on decision making groups and applies pedagogically sound games design principles. An evaluation of the game design was carried out based on a paper prototype. Eight participants were recruited and assigned to two groups of four participants each. These groups were video recorded while playing the game and the video was analysed in terms of game actions and member participation. Results indicate that the group who behaved in a more appropriate manner for a decision making group were rewarded with more positive feedback from the game state. These findings suggest that the game itself delivers appropriate feedback to players on their collaborative behaviour and is thus fit for the purposes intended in the current project.

See further details here