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Last year, CASLS designed and piloted Ecopod: Survival, the first iteration of place-based, augmented reality games for language learning. The inspiration for this game was the Common Reading for the 2015-2016 academic year at the University of Oregon, Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel, where a flu epidemic has wiped out a significant portion of humanity and the remnants struggle to hold on to their culture and their identity. Students at the University of Oregon in the “Living the Language” residential immersion program used the game as part of their coursework, engaging in modules that required them to use both language and content expertise to solve problems, find collaborators, and build community.

Now, CASLS is on to the next phase with the creation of Ecopod: Quake Response, a game which continues to play off the theme of disaster scenarios. In this version of the ARIS place-based, augmented reality game, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake devastates the city of Eugene and the University of Oregon campus. Students are enlisted by the emergency response team on campus to help identify useful social media posts, specifically from Twitter and Instagram, in order to find areas in need of assistance. Several posts will appear on the game map for the student to look over, but it is ultimately up to them to determine which posts are worth keeping and which ones to throw away. Once the student has gathered enough information, they will try to determine the kinds of emergencies that are occurring across campus, such as the location of a fire or where reported thefts are taking place.

Ben Pearson, CASLS Digital Technologies Associate and lead developer on the Ecopod games, recently commented on how this game is being implemented: “The thing that really excites me about this game in particular are the cross-curricular opportunities that it enables. We are working with Christopher Bone from the Geography department to use this game for his own classroom purposes. His notions on how to utilize ‘Big Data’ to create a digital map in order to find useful clusters of information really line up with many of the ideas we have about integrating place with language. We have already used Ecopod: Quake Response in an ESL context with very interesting results, and we are excited to see how it is used from a Geography perspective.”

For more information about Ecopod and other place-based games used for language learning, click here to visit the Games 2 Teach website, or here to visit Pebll, to see if there are other place-based experiences near you! We would love to hear your input on your experience with using Games 2 Teach. Write to us at info@uoregon.edu, follow us on https://twitter.com/CASLS_nflrc, or like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/casls.nflrc.

Photo from Oregon Summer Program (OSP) students doing activities with EcoPod: Quake Response.