1. Native Dancer Diabetes Health Care Education Game

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

3. NDSU WWWIC World Wide Web Instructional Committee WWWIC’s virtual worlds research supported by NSF grants DUE-9752548, EAR-9809761, DUE-9981094, ITR-0086142 and EPSCoR 99-77788 WWWIC faculty supported by large teams of undergraduate and graduate students. Paul JuellDonald Schwert Phillip McCleanBrian Slator Bernhardt Saini-EidukatAlan White Jeff Clark

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

5. 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”)

6. 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

7. The Geology Explorer

8. The Virtual Cell

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

10. 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

11. Mean Post-Intervention Scenario Scores for 1998 Geology Explorer - NDSU Physical Geology Students GraderGraderGrader GroupNo.OneTwoThree Alternate 9529.3a27.0a42.6a Control19525.1a25.5a44.5a Planet Oit 7840.5b35.4b53.4b 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.

12. Native Dancer Diabetes Health Care Education Game

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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…

16. Yes, but video games: Reach the target audience: 10-18+ “proclivities of youth” Provide virtual/safe environment to experiment & learn New, emerging genre of healthy video games Dance Dance Revolution

17. 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: http://atl.ndsu.edu/articles_online/

18. 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.

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

20. 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

21. 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

22. Measuring Daily Life Opportunities and Decisions Youth summer life data: Interviews and observations Youth school life data: 1. In-school survey: grades 5 through 12 1. 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

23. 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

24. Native Dancer Team Contacts Lisa Brandt, PhD, Anthropologist Lisa.Brandt@ndsu.nodak.edu 701-231-6498 Monte Fox, WERTC Diabetes Project Director Montef@whiteearth.com 218-983-3285 ext. 412