MoDo: Supporting crisis training with a mobile collaborative game

Abstract

Rescue teams and other volunteers needs necessary training to operate quickly in a crisis situation. This research aim to discover in which way mobile games can be used to promote skills related to crisis management(CM)\nomenclature{CM}{Crisis Management}.Crisis situations are never the same, and training for these events can be complicated and costly. This thesis focus on creating a mobile game aimed to teach strategy, collaboration and interaction techniques, which is some of the basics of crisis management. Just think about it, by creating exercises with a game, we can actually 'play' the exercise and then get the results presented in a comprehensible way.\\MoDo is a highly flexible mobile game system, designed to create different situations that can be played in almost any environments. MoDo focus on skills like collaboration, team-building and territory exploration that can be difficult to train during normal training situations. A video demonstration of MoDo can be found at www.vimeo.com/67128800MoDo ended up as a complex mobile game system with the opportunity of promoting relevant skills for crisis management. Feedback from game sessions showed that MoDo can promote collaboration, team-building and support post-game reflection. Participants playing the game also highlighted the game as engaging and challenging. Despite MoDo will need more testing with experts, the game have shown that mobile games will play a vital role when it comes to alternative learning approaches for crisis management.