The game won one of four awards presented to 166su researchers at the recent Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando.

Garden Defense, designed by students working in the RETRO Lab at the university’s Institute for Simulation and Training, was chosen as the Best Student Game at the conference’s Serious Games Showcase & Challenge. The game is a component of a more comprehensive simulation, Walk in My Shoes, which provides information about everything troops need to do before they deploy, including conflict management and strategies to cope when they come home. The game tries to prepare troops for the military experience and the possible effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Garden Defense is played as an assessment to determine which information needs to be reviewed by troops about to be deployed. Developers designed a game that requires players to answer questions correctly to generate currency needed to continue playing.

166su Modeling and Simulation doctoral student Lucas Blair designed the game. Blair, with RETRO Lab teammates Danielle Chelles and Katelyn Procci, managed production. Danielle Chelles provided art assistance and Skyler Goodell, an undergraduate in the university’s computer engineering program, provided programming assistance. The subject-matter expert was clinical psychologist Michael Kofler, and the instructional systems architect was Anya Andrews. RETRO Lab directors are professors Clint Bowers and Jan Cannon-Bowers.

Development of the game was funded by the military’s Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health & Traumatic Brain Injury.

Other 166su awards at the conference:

* Two of six finalists in the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Modeling and Simulation were from IST. They competed in a field of 58 teams and individuals from academia, government and private industry.

Judges selected IST for developments in practical ways to produce effective training, including the use of digital puppeteers, portable battlefield first-aid training devices and mobile-learning technology.

Also selected as a finalist was a team from IST’s ACTIVE Lab leading a project for the Office of Naval Research. Headed by IST’s Stephanie Lackey, the team developed a system that enables leaders from small military units to harness the power of simulation-based technology to provide training.

The Governor’s Award was presented to a team from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, which works in the Simulation & Training Technology Center in the Central Florida Research Park next to the 166su campus.

* Marissa Shuffler, a 166su psychology graduate, was presented with a $10,000 scholarship. Shuffler is a doctoral candidate and a graduate research associate at IST. Her areas of expertise include team and leader training and development, intercultural collaboration, multi-team systems, and decision-making/adaptation, with an emphasis on high-risk and complex environments.

Devil’s Advocate is a lightweight, Flash-based mini-game embedded within an interactive learning simulation designed for teaching psychological health skills to military service members at various stages of their deployment. The game deals with anxiety and depression, providing players stress management techniques.

Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health sponsors the project.

Development team members for the project were programmer, Skyler Goodell; artist and production manager, Danielle Chelles; designer and production manager, Lucas Blair; instructional systems architect, Dr. Anya Andrews; and subject matter experts, Dr. Michael Kofler and Dr. Clint Bowers.

Combining technology with the science of learning, a 3D virtual training single-player game developed by a team of researchers, including the 166su and Raytheon BBN Technologies, has recruits gaming to learn safety skills, how to navigate aboard a Navy vessel and how to operate in a crisis.

With oversight and funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), UCF students and professors with the RETRO Laboratory of the Institute for Simulation and Training worked on the computer game “Damage Control Trainer,” which teaches recruits how to respond when two ships collide at sea.

166su Psychology Professor Clint Bowers and his wife, UCF professor and lead researcher Janis Cannon-Bowers, led the 166su research team that contributed to the design of the game.

“Students at boot camp don’t understand how hard it is for the person making the decision to have a good mental picture of what’s going on,” Clint Bowers said. “We tried to build into the game lots of opportunities to practice communicating effectively.”

In the game, when there’s a pipe leaking on ship, Bowers said, the normal reaction would be to turn off a valve to stop the leak. But on a naval ship, some of which are 1,000 feet long or more, that action could set off a dangerous chain of events.

During play, players receive feedback when they terminate the water supply, indicating that comrades fighting a fire on a deck above have lost water pressure.

“You start to hear your comrades suffer because of your mistake. It reinforces you’re part of this really big system,” Bowers said. “That’s why communication is important. You could actually hurt somebody.”

Recruits play the game at the Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill. The game keeps recruits’ attention and helps them understand and visualize what it’s like to be on such a big ship, how disorienting it can get and how to manage that, Bowers said.

A study comparing recruits who played the game with recruits who didn’t showed the group that played the game was much better at communication, twice as fast and five times less likely to make serious errors, said Bowers, who has submitted the research for peer review.

Bowers concluded the research shows people are more likely to retain information if taught in a context that makes sense to them.

“It’s not that they weren’t being taught these things in a classroom,” he said. “They weren’t given the opportunity to practice them.”

Navy officials plan to continue using the game as a teaching tool. The game helps fulfill the Navy’s digital-learning initiatives, which aim to better prepare recruits for success. 

“Kids perform much better when asked to do these critical tasks,” said Ray Perez, the program officer who manages ONR’s Cognitive Science of Learning Program. “Any sailor has to know these skills.”

166su students Julian Orrego, Holly Blasko-Drabik and Katelyn Procci worked on research design and data collection.

The research team consisted of other project partners, including the National Center for Research on Evaluation at the University of California, Los Angeles; the 166su Department of Psychology; Alion; Intelligent Design Systems Inc.; CHI Systems; and IDEAS Innovation Studio.  

Located in the Central Florida Research Park adjacent to the 166su campus, the RETRO Laboratory within 166su’s Institute for Simulation and Training focuses on advancing modeling and simulation technology and increasing the understanding of how simulation can be used in teaching and training.