Some 85 Hammond High School students and their teachers are coming to Purdue University Calumet’s Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation (CIVS) Friday (12/5) to participate in a simulated learning experience designed to advance insights about distributive justice.
The students will explore circumstances described in the non-fiction book, “Full Body Burden,” by Kristen Iverson. The book is about a small Colorado town and the toxic, radioactive effect its citizens experience from Rocky Flats, a nearby, secret nuclear weapons plant. Governmental attempts to conceal the plant’s destructive impact and local residents’ efforts to seek justice also are described in the book.
Learning via interactive video game
Utilizing Purdue Calumet’s CIVS facility, an interdisciplinary applied research center that combines advanced simulation techniques with 3-D visualization and virtual reality technologies, the Hammond High students will participate in an interactive video game. The game will engage the students to apply distributive justice—fair allocation of resources among diverse members of a community—by distributing $100 million in virtual compensation to town residents.
While participating in the game, students will learn about and apply ideas of distributive justice to significant social issues. Purdue Calumet Chancellor Emeritus Howard Cohen, also a professor of philosophy who teaches courses in ethics, originated a version of the game during the 1980s while teaching social philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Learning, evaluating and applying principles
“Last year, through CIVS, I was able to re-conceptualize it as an interactive video game,” he said. “The purpose of the game is to help students evaluate alternative principles of justice and apply the principle they prefer to a real distribution problem.”
According to CIVS Director, Interim Associate Vice Chancellor and Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chenn Zhou, “CIVS worked with Dr. Cohen to convert the readings and concepts of a pencil and paper classroom exercise into an interactive multimedia game using programming and graphics. The game was modified for the case of Rocky Flats and can be run on both PC and web.”
Multi-disciplinary activities
An idea by Hammond High teachers Jacqueline Brasseur, Cynthia Cavanaugh, Bianca Gomez, Theresa Knipe and Thomas Harkenrider inspired the game’s nuclear variant. The teachers developed an educational model to introduce their students to “Full Body Burden” in language/composition class and coordinate related activities in biology, chemistry and environmental science classes.
Approaching the book’s study in a cross-curriculum manner is an effort to enable students to explore ethics, literature and composition, while also learning about the biology of health effects, the chemistry of nuclear products and the environmental impact of contamination.