Game Education Summit North America 2010 - Presentation

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - 02:30 PM - 50 Min | Serious Games Track

Collaboration and compromise
Wed, 2010-06-16 14:30 - 15:20
Serious Games Track
Dr Claudia McDonald
Associate Vice President for Special Projects
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Presentation Summary:

Teamwork takes compromise. Medical academics and videogame industry collaborators must be willing to learn each other’s culture and lexicon; otherwise, there’s a train wreck just around the bend.

Paper Abstract:

Dr. Claudia L. McDonald, Associate Vice President for Special Projects at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and BreakAway Ltd. CEO Doug Whatley have first-hand knowledge of the Pulse!! collaboration from its inception in 2005. They have worked their way through a thicket of competing priorities, from the researcher’s concern for reliability and validity to the CEO’s desire to develop a marketable product as soon as possible. The project has yet to run off the rails. Everyone has had something to learn, not only about the complexity of creating medical cases in virtual space but also about each other in an inevitable clash of technological, medical and academic cultures.

The Pulse!! project encompasses a team of subject-matter experts, theorists specializing in virtual-reality learning applications and human factors and a first-rate game-development company. Funded by federal grants totaling more than $15 million, Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab has been tested at prestigious medical institutions, and the technology has been licensed to the university’s private-sector partner.

It all began with a curious university professor having a go at a first-person shooter game and wondering: Why not use this technology to create a realistic environment for clinical medical education?