Game Based Learning 2010

Kris Rockwell founded Hybrid Learning Systems in 2003. Prior to starting Hybrid, Kris worked developing Computer Based Training (CBT) and desktop simulation systems for flight-training. For the past seven years, Kris has focused on mobile learning content.

www.hybrid-learning.com
http://twitter.com/hybridkris
www.krisrockwell.com/blog

The Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world environment as the game board. Unlike a traditional video game, an ARG takes place in real time and users often receive information via existing media channels such as Twitter, websites and SMS messages and the game evolves as players make choices. With the success of ARG events such as I Love Bees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees) and Year Zero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(game) ) the ARG has become a viable gaming platform. At the 2009 DevLearn Conference an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) titled Zombie Apocalypse was developed for use at the conference as an experiment. The idea was to use the game to teach participants about the benefits of social media tools for the purposes of informal learning. The ARG, which leveraged Twitter, YouTube, blogs and a web portal, encouraged users to form teams to defeat the “zombies” that were keeping their organizations growth at bay by preventing social media access and use. As clues were disseminated via Twitter, Flickr and at the conference, users entered discovered clue codes into the web portal to “kill zombies” and gain points. This presentation will focus on the development and implementation of the Zombie Apocalypse game, look at the outcomes and talk about results that indicate that the ARG is an excellent solution for team training. Joint presentation Kris Rockwell & Koreen Olbrish.