REBOOT Summary
REBOOT is a super-engaging dynamic Mobile Application-based exercise for teaching sustainability practices to students and staff anywhere on campus. REBOOT was built by a student team with faculty supervision. The project will be supported by the following entities: Sustainability Office, MTE Meridian LLC, School of Journalism, Student Sustainability, & Mizzou Advantage.
Project Objectives
There are two primary project objectives for REBOOT
The first is to create a reusable mobile application platform designed to produce interactive game events that change the way users think about a particular idea or topic and that take place over a period of days to months. Each challenge will reinforce a particular topic or message established by the creators while creating a sense of fun and community. The REBOOT platform would be able to support multiple game types in the forms of game modules which are built to specific web standards. It will also have a common scoring, tracking and virtual currency system. It will support “avatar health and maintenance” as a model for measuring game progress and effectiveness
Once the project is complete the project teams objective would be to have a licensable platform that can be offered to other groups on campus and licensed to other universities and organizations.
The second, and ultimately more important, objective is to dramatically increase campus wide awareness of all the small things each of us can do, which when added up, dramatically reduce our negative impact on our immediate environment and actually increase our quality of life. This will be done through REBOOT a ten week long game based event that begins on February 12th and ends on April 22nd (Earth Day Weekend).
Project Description
All members of the Mizzou community (including students, faculty, staff and the local community) can actively learn new ideas and skills through media engagement, competition, and “proof of progress” (rewards, badges). REBOOT will integrate all of these things into a series of ten unique challenges; one challenge per week for the duration of the game. The game objective of REBOOT is to keep your team’s “avatar” healthy over a ten week period – and keeping their “carbon footprint” as small as possible. A registered team has to consist of at least two people, with no limit on total people. All will compete equally because scoring is based around the health of the team’s avatar.
Completing ten difficult, yet fun, weekly challenges – each about a different sustainability topic-requires teams to creatively solve problems, change habits, visit geo-tagged locations, etc. Each challenge earns team’s points by proving their progress via posting the required verifying media on REBOOT’s game website.
Each week a new game based challenge will be offered.
These challenges will not be strictly web-based but instead will require deep interaction with each team’s physical world. Team’s will have to travel to nearby locations for many of the challenges. At some of these locations they will have to find hidden objects, both physical, and objects found through the use of augmented reality. The location of these objects will be determined by solving very challenging problems based around that week’s category/topic. Some of these challenges may require participants to walk, en masse, to a location, or ride bikes instead of driving. And for each challenge they will have to prove their success by submitting, both digital and physical proof of completion. This may include digital photos/videos/audio/signatures/data or physical proof, like water samples from a stream.
Throughout the event digital awards and rewards will be given each week to game leaders as well as for other reasons, e.g, the most creative solution to a particular challenge. However the final winners will win high value prizes and rewards given out at the awards event at the end of the contest – including a large, sponsored, cash award ($1000).
When the event is completed all data will be compiled and a final report on the project will be presented to the Office of Sustainability to prove the effectiveness of the project in both creating a re-useable event gaming platform, and in objectively quantifying user numbers, activities, impacts, knowledge and awareness of sustainability issues. Mizzou Advantage will fund researchers to quantify these results
Evaluation Criteria
We will use the following criteria to determine if the project has been completed successfully:
1. Successful integration of the gaming platform by 02/01/12 deadline
2. System test complete before launch date of 02/12/12
3. Individual game launches tested one week before their unique launch date.
4. Successful completion of all games by 04/22/12
5. Submission of all data findings to Office of Sustainability including: participation rates, mind-share impact, behavior change indicators, economic impact.
6. Successful development and integration of product to allow on-going licensing to other organizations.
Team Members
Steve Burdic –MU Sustainability Coordinator. Tracks and implements sustainability activities for the campus and is tasked with getting people involved in the issues in fun and engaging ways leading to lifetimes of beneficial activities.
Ryan Tang manages international marketing and project management for MTE Meridian and has experience in B2B international sales and marketing in both China and the United States.
Ryan Donnelly is a junior Computer Science major with a focus in database. He is fluent in many computer languages including: Java (used for Android apps), C, MySQL (Database) and PHP (Web sites).
Peter Meng – is a Fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and former employee of DOIT. He will be assisting in creating awareness of the Game/event and will be integrating digital advertising into numerous of campus mediums to create awareness of the event and help keep it current during the 10 week period.