Project Overview
Hexacago 2.0 GO (Game On!) is a Ci3 project funded through the NIH’s Science Education Partnership Award. This five-year research intervention is designed to introduce game-based learning, game design, systems thinking, and playing & making approaches into the high school STEM classroom. Research from our team and others has shown that integrating game play and design with positive youth development frameworks increases interest in STEM and health careers, including among student populations that have been historically excluded. Hexacago 2.0 GO builds on the success of our 2014-2019 board game project, Hexacago Health Academy (HHA). While the output of the first project was youth co-designed educational board games, this new iteration focuses on curricula developed to integrate game design and other playing & making approaches in the classroom.
HHA by the numbers
Students Served
Co-designed games Created
Peer Mentors
Unique curricula Developed
Hexacago Health Academy games include:
infection city
In this board game, players cooperate as a team of epidemiologists who try to contain a meningitis outbreak. Players build clinics and vaccinate populations while meningitis spreads.
hearsay
This storytelling card game is about contraception, relationships, emotions, and social networks.
smokestacks
This game lets players assume the role of a tobacco executive whose goal is to make money in the face of customer deaths from tobacco related diseases.
clinic quest
Clinic Quest is a trivia game where players take on the role of a health researcher who collects data about six common sexually transmitted infections.
babytown
In this game, players have a possibility of becoming high-school parents and must try to balance their GPA, finances, and social life with their baby’s health and happiness. See our research brief on babytown here.
pipeline
This is a game about the structures that feed into an increasingly violent city. Players take on the role of the police commissioner, the mayor, or a drug dealer who all strive for their own personal victories even at the cost of the city’s health.
HHA 2.0 was a two-year summer workshop that focused on utilizing game play to encourage interest in STEM/health, application of social justice values, understanding of civic engagement, and implementation of peer mentorship. In Summer 2021 HHA 2.0 was instructed virtually due to COVID 19, while Summer 2022 provided in-person learning opportunities. Both years resulted in game prototype development by participants. Students found the curriculum to be engaging and informative, one 2022 participant explained that, “I learned a lot more than I expected from games. I feel like it was really successful.”
HHA Summer 2021
We completed development of a 10-day virtual curriculum for curriculum based on positive youth development, conscientization, social-cognitive career theory, game making/playing, and active learning frameworks.
This curriculum was structured around two content area units: HIV and reproductive justice. Each unit contained three learning modules conducted on separate days and required the instructor, mentors, and students to play STEM professionals. The emphasis for the curriculum was on analyzing real data, working in teams, and using science to work toward health justice
Female
Hispanic/Latinx
Mean Age
12th Grade Students
11th Grade Students
HHA Summer 2022
We developed a three-week in-person HHA 2.0 GO curriculum devoted to public health concepts and game design. The first week comprised a five-day curriculum highlighting two significant public health issues encountered by our students: food insecurity and community violence. During the third week, we introduced a seven-step process for the students to get started designing their own games. Student groups selected a topic; chose a system to simulate, a player perspective, and a core mechanic; and began the game design process, including a cycle of iterative playtesting. Students were encouraged to go through this cycle more than once, and to design a game around the public health concepts introduced in Week 1.
Female
Mean Age
12th Grade Students
11th Grade Students
HHA 2022 HIGHLights
HHA 2022
5 Game Prototypes
“Herd” a HHA 2022 game designed by participants. This game used themes learned during HHA such as system level thinking, structural violence, and the socio-ecological model to highlight issues around Big Pharma.
HHA 2022
Game Showcase
HHA Participants showcased their games to Ci3 and Media, Arts, Data, and Design Center (MADD) staff. Ci3 Faculty Director, Lee Hasselbacher, learns about housing equity from the game: “Moving Up”.
HHA 2022
Peer Mentorship
HHA Participants and Near Peer Mentors work together to discuss and teach others how to play their game. Near Peer Mentors were 19-23 year old Chicagoland peer-educators who worked in teaching and implementing the HHA curriculum.
HHA Playing and Making Academy
HHA Summer 2023, the HHA Playing and Making Academy, hosted 7 Chicagoland teachers at our game-based professional development week-long training. This training focused on helping educators leverage game design in their classrooms. Teachers will implement their games in classrooms this year with the assistance of HHA game experts. In the coming months, the HHA team will provide teacher resources for other educators interested in leveraging the positive educational elements of game design.
HHA Playing and Making Academy Learning Objectives
01
Learn how games foster meaningful play.
The first milestone in the HHA Playing and Making Academy is understanding how games foster meaningful play. It is important to see how play is a tool for learning before implementing game design.
02
Learn the fundamentals of game design.
The second milestone in the curriculum is to ensure that all teachers understand and conceptualize the fundamentals of game design. Mastering the basics of game design is essential in preparing teachers to create game prototypes in milestone three.
03
Create a game prototype and corresponding curriculum.
The third milestone in our professional development curriculum is to assist teachers in creating a game and curriculum to meet students’ educational objectives. These curricula will be specific for each teacher’s subject; however, all incorporate the fundamentals of game design and game learning.
HHA 2023
HHA 2023 teacher cohort, instructors Jessie and Patrick, discussing implementing gameplay in classrooms.
“I think from the beginning, it’s felt really fun and engaging. And I think a big thing I’ve talked about with other teachers in the past has been when we go to mandated professional developments, oftentimes the ones that feel the most useful where we can walk away with something that we can implement right away. And from the beginning, it’s really felt that way, living in this perfect balance between the world of theory, but also the world of practice, putting it together in a really actual way.”
-HHA Summer Teacher
HHA 2023
HHA 2023 teacher cohort creating prototypes of games to facilitate in their classrooms during the school year.
“Game design, just think about consequences, actions and outcomes. Thinking about relating it to a, not emotional, but a narrative that can help the world. There’s just different branches in which the students can take it after we give them the curriculum and the guidance. The simulation can represent anything. And that’s the point, is that we want them to apply it to something that means to them so that playing it can also help change it, if that makes sense.”
-HHA Summer Teacher
Read about HHA 2.0 Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA).
For More Information
To learn more about Hexacago Health Academy, contact Ailea Stites at astites@bsd.uchicago.edu.