Adventure-style serious game for a science lab

Abstract

Universities and medical companies deal constantly with the issue of training their students and staff in making proper use of their laboratories. Laboratory skills and accurate implementation of safety rules cannot be developed through simple observation. Practice in a laboratory requires dedication, time and space flexibility and controlled experimentation with the highly sensitive and expensive lab equipment. Specifically, hands-on laboratory workshops or «wet workshops» combine theoretical and practical training and perform step by step experimental procedures including various lab instruments and potential hazardous substances to educate participants. To overcome such limitations and provide both realism and user-friendliness, Onlabs demo, has been developed to reflect a modern commercial 3D Adventure Game; the user uses the arrow keys to navigate in the lab and the mouse to press buttons, turn knobs, use specific objects alone or in pairs and collect several of them in their inventory. Onlabs simulates the biology laboratory at the Hellenic Open University, Greece and already fulfills a detailed overview of the photonic microscopy and the preparation of buffer solutions. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.