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July 30, 2007
Learning, Design and Technology Expo
At the Learning, Design, and Technology Expo, Stanford graduate students in the school of Learning, Design and Technology displayed their master's projects, showing off their hard work and creativity throughout the program. At the expo, there was a plethora of rich, cutting edge examples of captology put to use. Many of the projects included a simulated reality, often in the form of a game, that was designed to change a persons behavior. For example, the project by Vic Vuchic and Greg Warman entitled "Financial Smackdown" consists of an online and mobile phone-based virtual reality where the user is assigned a character to lead around this virtual reality. The user takes responsibility for the character's financial well-being, allowing him to buy practical things and preventing him from over-indulging. Through the example and practice with this character, the user learns good financial habits and awareness. This program will hopefully help to fight off the financial crisis that is "looming" in America as a result of unhealthy financial strategies. This again was only one of the many great examples of captology put to use at the expo. Other examples ranged from inspiring better recycling strategies to helping teachers be more effective with long division. In fact, the Persuasive Technology Lab's very own Rolf Steier had a fascinating exhibit on his project entitled "Discovery Pathways: Developing Science Thinking in Children by Mapping Connections in Museum Spaces." The expo was held at the Wallenberg Hall at Stanford University. More inforation can be found here: http://events.stanford.edu/events/116/11662/.
--Dana Sittler
Posted by Dana Sittler at July 30, 2007 03:20 PM