Seven University Gameplay

On Earth Day 2011 the founding members of the UVA Bay Game User Group conducted the first large-scale multiple location gameplay, using internet videoconferencing to link player teams from the United States Naval Academy, George Mason University, William and Mary, Hampton University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia.

This innovative gameplay created a distinctive opportunity for multiple institutions to join together to celebrate Earth Day by demonstrating the power of individual and collective decision making to alter the current trend of decline in Bay health.

The gameplay also launched a regional higher education user group that in 2011-12 tested the UVA Bay Game in a wide range of class sizes and format, from environmental sciences to architecture, planning, economics, and political science, and extended the collaborative game development process that is a defining feature of the UVA Bay Game. This allowed the project to assess game playability in diverse settings, collect data for learning assessment, and lay the foundation for a much larger user group that could include every higher education institution in the six-state (and District of Columbia) Chesapeake Bay watershed. We know of no comparable initiative in any other US watershed.

The gameplay was held on 22 April from 2:00 - 4:00 pm. The UVA School of Architecture's Insight Lab served as the base of operations and production studio. With large screens and monitors we will link all the participating teams in one large virtual space. At each of the seven institutions student teams will represent one of the seven major riversheds in the Chesapeake Bay region:

• Patuxent: United States Naval Academy (Howard Ernst, Political Science, ernst@usna.edu)
• Potomac: George Mason University (Dana Dolan, Public Policy, ddolan1@gmu.edu)
• York: William and Mary (Randy Chambers, Biology, rmcham@wm.edu)
• James: Hampton University (Carmina Sanchez-del-Valle, Architecture, Carmina.Sanchez@Hampton.edu)
• Eastern Shore: Old Dominion University (Richard Zimmerman, Oceanography, RZimmerm@odu.edu)
• Rappahannock: Virginia Tech (Theo Dillaha, Biological Systems Engineering, dillaha@vt.edu)
• Susquehanna: UVA (Jeffrey Plank, Office of the Vice President for Research, jplank@virginia.edu)

The Virginia Sea Grant Program provided funding to support the Earth Day 2011 7 University gameplay.