In order to achieve crisis preparedness a number of approaches are combined including traditional training through courses and training material, coaching, simulated emergencies to recreate realistic working experiences, and structured debriefings to learn by reflecting on specific work experiences. Recently, Serious Games have also been proposed for this domain and experiments on their usage show that games can help to address some of traditional training limitations. In this paper we describe the first steps towards the creation of a system for supporting crisis preparedness through games. In particular, based on our experience with this domain, we reflect on the use of serious games for learning cooperation at work. A set of questions for guiding further research are identified.
Work in crisis situations, like earthquakes and floods, is highly cooperative [
Copyright © 2013 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. gies to be adopted at the three levels might be very different and involve different actors.
Training of crisis workers has to take into account the cooperative nature of the
work. Therefore, training is not only addressing learning of operational procedures
and use of specific equipment, but also the development of cooperation skills, like
appropriate communication styles, information sharing, and coordination [
A number of approaches are combined for training for crisis preparedness,
including traditional training through courses and training material, coaching, simulated
emergencies to recreate realistic working experiences [
In this paper we briefly present the work that we have done in the area of serious games for crisis preparedness, with focus on training of cooperation skills. The main purpose is to share this experience at the workshop in order to discuss strengths and challenges connected to the use of serious games to support learning of cooperation skills in the workplace. 2
To understand the current state of the art in the crisis management field we analyzed
how cooperation was taken into account in 10 serious games for crisis management
training [
Communication: All the analyzed works put communication between the team
members at the core of the learning experience. However we can distinguish two
approaches. From one hand the system generates a task environment in which a group of
people co-operate to deal with a crisis with an inter-sector approach [
Roles and Coordination: The way teams coordinate is generally dependent on how
specific game sessions evolve, but coordination generally plays an important role in
training games. For example, in [
For what concern citizens training, in the domain of serious games we were only
able to find games aimed at sensitizing the population, not at training communication
and coordination skills (see e.g., FloodSim [
Because of the importance of cooperation skill training underlined in previous
sections we have designed 3 serious games for crisis training which explicitly train
different kinds of cooperation skills: Don’t Panic [
Don’t Panic is a cooperative board game addressing inter sectors/agencies cooperation. The game is mainly targeting the leaders of different agencies involved in crisis management. The game has multiple aims linked to soft skills teaching and learning, but in particular wants to teach communication styles useful to manage crisis events and foster team building.
MoDo is a mobile game to be played in teams in a physical environment through the usage of mobile devices and technology-augmented objects. With this game we targeted crisis workers, focusing at intra-team coordination.
Flooded is a location-based mobile game to be played in the player's local territory aimed at sensitizing citizens to the risks linked to flooding. Because of the target, the dynamics are less strict and the game focuses on showing the impact of bad coordination and communication in a crisis. Fig. 1 shows the different interaction modalities used in the games.
Our first assessments [
The games we conceived until now address in a separate way the three identified cooperation levels. Our next step will be to bring these games together. For example, we want to link Don’t Panic and MoDo, so that players of the first can create missions to be completed by the players of the second. In this way we can create a more holistic approach to crisis management teaching and learning problem. 4
Basing on our experience, at the workshop we are interested in discussing issues connected to the usage of games for training cooperation skills.
Issues of relevance are: - What are the strengths and weaknesses of games for learning cooperation skills? Our initial results are positive, showing the development of relevant skills, even if we have not yet conducted a large-scale evaluation. At the same time, it is difficult to evaluate the actual learning impact of these tools, especially in relation to cooperation skills, which are intrinsically difficult to measure. - Are games for learning cooperation equally suitable in different work domains? I.e., is it possible to reuse the game dynamics in a different domain? - To what extent cooperation skills can be developed with games that are independent by specific work practices? For example, the games that we have developed refer to specific crisis situations, e.g. panic management and floods. Research is needed to understand the advantages of integrating the learning of cooperation skills with other work-related skills and evaluate them against cost. In fact, more generic games not connected to specific work practices could have the advantage of being usable across domains. - How do game dynamics strengthen or weaken the training of certain cooperation skills? The games that we have developed are all cooperative, requiring a team to work together towards a common objective, winning or loosing together. This reflects reality. At the same time, it is known that competition across teams can act as a strong motivator to playing (and therefore learning). Could competition be adopted as motivator without negatively impacting on the learning objective of the game? - How are different modalities of interaction promoting or hindering cooperation? For example, in Don´t Panic the physical configuration of the game recreates, to a certain extent, a situation similar to the one in a control room and it seems to promote team building and co-located communication. A mobile game, with players physically distributed, promotes completely different styles of communication and information sharing.
The work was partly funded by the NFR VERDIKT FABULA project. We thank the students who helped us in the design and development of the games presented in the paper and the volunteers who helped us with the evaluation. A special thank is due to Simone Mora and Gianni Della Valle.