Native Dancer Diabetes Health Care Education Game

Dr. Brian M. Slator, Computer Science Department North Dakota State University Immersive Role-based Environments for Education

NDSU WWWIC World Wide Web Instructional Committee WWWIC’s virtual worlds research supported by NSF grants DUE , EAR , DUE , ITR and EPSCoR WWWIC faculty supported by large teams of undergraduate and graduate students. Paul JuellDonald Schwert Phillip McCleanBrian Slator Bernhardt Saini-EidukatAlan White Jeff Clark

MultiUser Exploration Spatially-oriented virtual worlds Practical planning and decision making Educational Role-playing Games “Learning-by-doing” Experiences

Balancing Pedagogy with Play Games have the capacity to engage! Powerful mechanisms for instruction Illustrate real-world content and structure Promote strategic maturity (“learning not the law, but learning to think like a lawyer”)

The Projects l The Virtual Cell l Dollar Bay l Like-a-Fishhook Village l Digital Archive for Archaeology l Others l The Geology Explorer

The Geology Explorer

The Virtual Cell

Fort Berthold and Like-A-Fishhook Village Photo of Arikara Lodge, Form-Z Extrusion, VRML model

The Geology Explorer: Assessment Protocol Pre-course Assessment: 400+ students Computer Literacy Assessment: (244 volunteers) Divide by Computer Literacy and Geology Lab Experience Geomagnetic (Alternative) Group: (122 students) Geology Explorer Geology Explorer Treatment Group: (122 students) Non-Participant Control Non-Participant ControlGroup: (150 students, approx.) Completed Completed (78 students) Non- completed Non- completed (44 students) Completed Completed (95 students) Non- completed Non- completed (27 students) Post-course Assessment: 368 students Example: Fall, 1998

Mean Post-Intervention Scenario Scores for 1998 Geology Explorer - NDSU Physical Geology Students GraderGraderGrader GroupNo.OneTwoThree Alternate a27.0a42.6a Control a25.5a44.5a Planet Oit b35.4b53.4b Within any column, any two means followed by the same letter are not significantly different at P=0.05 using Duncan’s multiple range mean separation test.

Native Dancer Diabetes Health Care Education Game

Diabetes and Native Americans Diabetes Epidemic: approximately 33% of Native Americans have some form of diabetes 22% of White Earth people have Type II Diabetes (so-called adult onset) Typical onset, 10 years ago: 42 years old Today, youngest case: 9 years old. Increased 32% in ages 15-19

Nutrition and Physical Activity “Reduction in incidence of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin” (New England Journal of Medicine, 2002) Percent reduced incidence of diabetes 17% placebo 31% metformin 58% nutrition/physical activity

Why a video game? Don’t video games… Encourage sedentary behavior Often have themes that glorify: Violence (You name it) Space Invaders, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Golden Eye - 007, Quake I-III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Area 51, etc… Sex Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Freestyle BMX, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, etc… Other anti-social behavior Grand Theft Auto I-III, Midnight Club, Twisted Metal, etc…

Yes, but video games: Reach the target audience: “proclivities of youth” Provide virtual/safe environment to experiment & learn New, emerging genre of healthy video games Dance Dance Revolution

1-2 users match the footsteps of a dancing game character on a Dance Grid in front of a large video screen User must exercise to play the game Users have lost up to 100lbs playing DDR See USA Today Online Article and Video News Story at:

The Sims A game where you make choices about your character’s lifestyle that may or may not negatively or positively affect the ability of the character to function as a person.

Then, what is Native Dancer? DDR meets the Sims Flow: health Lifestyle choices competition performance regalia reward competition standings

Friendly Competition Drives Learning Students strive to learn diet and lifestyle to do better in dance competition Assumes dance aspect of the game is fun & engaging Proper choices are rewarded with Powwow Regalia that allow dance character to gain more points in each competition

Benefits Immediate: provides a non-threatening, and easy exercise interactively engages child in health education process Cultural: encourages pride in child’s culture teaches cultural dance skills to children Provides: a culturally relevant map to long-term healthy lifestyle and diabetes management

Measuring Daily Life Opportunities and Decisions Youth summer life data: Interviews and observations Youth school life data: 1. In-school survey: grades 5 through Attitudes, behaviors, computer literacy (1 hour) 2. Age-appropriate questions, confidentiality guaranteed 3. Overall results available to schools, WERTC, and interested others 2.Computerized diary from (selected?) youth

Outcomes Assess change in nutrition behavior Assess change in physical activity behavior Assess change in attitudes toward individual health Creation of baseline dataset for longitudinal studies

Native Dancer Team Contacts Lisa Brandt, PhD, Anthropologist Monte Fox, WERTC Diabetes Project Director ext. 412