%0 Journal Article
%T A Design Case: Developing an Enhanced Version of the Diffusion Simulation Game
%A Miguel Angel Lara
%A Rodney Myers
%A Theodore W. Frick
%A Sinem Aslan
%J International Journal of Designs for Learning
%D 2010
%I Association for Educational Communications and Technology
%X In this paper, we present a design case describing the creation of a new online version of the Diffusion Simulation Game (DSG). The DSG is a serious game that teaches change management strategies aligned with Rogers¡¯ (2003) diffusion of innovations theory. The goal of the game is to promote the understanding of strategies that result in the adoption of an instructional innovation by the staff members of a fictional junior high school. The original board version of the game was created in the 1970s (Molenda and Rice, 1979) and was played as part of a course in the School of Education of a large Midwestern university. With the opening of a distance master¡¯s program, the first online version of the game was developed in 2002 (Frick, Ludwig, Kim, & Huang, 2003). In order to overcome some of the limitations of the first online version, a new online version of the DSG was developed. This new version was rapidly prototyped first on paper and then in Flex Builder, ActionScript, PHP and MySQL. A rapid prototype approach (Tripp & Bichelmeyer, 1990) was utilized to iteratively design the user interface. In addition to describing the design process and rationale for design decisions, we also report results of play-tests and usability evaluations of seven recruited participants and how the information collected from these evaluations will help us to improve the current design.
%U http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ijdl/article/view/867