On October 31, 2018, Professors Yifeng Hu of Communication Studies and Josh Fishburn of Interactive Multimedia led a team of students majoring in communication studies, public health, and interactive multimedia to present a project at TCNJ’s 4th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Forum. The project, titled “‘Fresh Start’ – A Video Game to Promote Mindful Drinking Among College Freshmen,” aims to create a new alcohol intervention program for incoming freshman through game-based learning.
The interdisciplinary faculty-student collaboration started with MUSE (Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience) in the summer of 2018. The six-person team first sought to understand all aspects of gamified learning through reading and discussing scholarly literature. Once they had an initial understanding of video games as a learning medium, the team started their research on other alcohol intervention programs to identify the information that the game should contain. The game design then went underway, with the Communication sub team working on scripts and public health concept implementation, and the Game sub team taking the lead in the programming and character design. Through this intensive 8-week process, the whole team was able to produce varying prototypes for the game and a full story line for the characters with many alcohol intervention concepts embedded within it.
Following MUSE, the team continues to work on creating the best product possible, now with several new members added to this innovative cross-disciplinary project. The team has formed a close partnership with professional staff at student affairs who provided specific learning outcomes for and valuable feedback on the project. Because of this partnership, the video game has the potential to be adopted as TCNJ’s mandatory alcohol education program in the future. Though the project still has a long way to go, it is committed to being a rare and valuable learning experience for students and a unique collaboration across campus.
 |
 |
 |
 |